Collaborative learning spaces

Group members: Lennart Baumgärtner & Hélène Gonnet

Problem statement:

Missing collaborative learning spaces. To learn or work together efficiently and comfortably, students need appropriate group spaces. However, there are not enough dedicated spaces for groups. Moreover, the current meeting rooms, which are currently not available for students, are not flexible, not well equipped, and look unattractive. For teachers, it is also hard to directly supervise and interact with their students working on an assignment, because they do not find places to do so.

Proposed solution:

Organized networking. We discovered that there are already some projects at the ETH going on in this direction, but that the implementation requires a lot of time and knowledge. Therefore, we would like to organize meetings where people involved or interested in such projects can share their experience, needs or suggestions.

Such rooms are necessary to allow students to practice communication and team related skills. Through interaction with others, students could also build deeper understanding of what they are learning. The feeling of community would increase as well when students meet for group work, by offering more chances for students to talk together.

Next steps:

Deeper understanding of the success factors. The project leaders we have contacted so far were willing to share their experience and some teachers were interested in the creation of more group working spaces. Therefore, we will contact experts, office companies or innovative companies to understand which room elements makes group work enjoyable and efficient. We will as well stay in touch with the different stakeholders involved in the existing projects at the ETH, as well as other universities and the ETH academic staff. Our goal is to facilitate the creation of more collaborative learning spaces. In parallel, the ETH also plans to develop a system to book the rooms by students through the EduApp, which would ease the access and finding of these places.

PDF presentation slides: Download 1_CollabLearningSpaces (PDF, 13 MB)