We are thrilled to announce that the first handbook of the space laboratories was published.
The handbook contains a collection of methods that were developed in the Raumlabore project – an initiative of the Dieter Schwarz Foundation and the Stifterverband.
As part of the "Space Labs" project, students, teachers and staff from five different universities worked together for up to 21 months to design, create, evaluate and repeatedly redesign physical learning spaces in order to develop future-oriented, effective and user-centered learning spaces. These projects created experimental spaces to promote the urgently needed active development of learning spaces.
In this context, the term "Raumlabor" refers to a space in which the room design and its interaction with innovative, learner-centered learning and teaching formats are actively investigated and evaluated. Students and teachers are both researchers and researched, and the room design is constantly changed and adapted. The term room laboratory is therefore used to describe a room that is continuously designed, changed and further developed by the users. This use of space is different from classic seminar and learning rooms and lecture halls, which usually specify a single - unchanging - room setting for use and are not or only limitedly geared towards active learning space design by students and teachers. Room laboratories are primarily integrated directly into teaching operations in the sense of real laboratories and often address formal and informal settings, but can also be used independently as a laboratory for teaching/learning settings for learning space research and further training purposes.
The methods collected are particularly suitable in a space laboratory setting in the sense of a real laboratory, but can also be used in space projects that aim at a new concept or one-off redesign and are not designed for continuous development or space evaluation. At the same time, the methods are an invitation to consider student participation and needs-based space adaptation in use in all learning space projects. This contributes to impact-oriented space offerings and allows for responses to emerging needs of students and future-oriented teaching.
In particular, university employees and teachers who are involved in both the interaction with students and in the planning processes of learning spaces are particularly well placed to place and implement these methods. Participatory, interdisciplinary planning processes should ideally go hand in hand with organization-wide concepts and consider university development, sustainability, digitalization strategy and learning space design together.
We are thrilled to announce that the first handbook of the space laboratories was published.
The handbook contains a collection of methods that were developed in the Raumlabore project – an initiative of the Dieter Schwarz Foundation and the Stifterverband.
As part of the "Space Labs" project, students, teachers and staff from five different universities worked together for up to 21 months to design, create, evaluate and repeatedly redesign physical learning spaces in order to develop future-oriented, effective and user-centered learning spaces. These projects created experimental spaces to promote the urgently needed active development of learning spaces.
In this context, the term "Raumlabor" refers to a space in which the room design and its interaction with innovative, learner-centered learning and teaching formats are actively investigated and evaluated. Students and teachers are both researchers and researched, and the room design is constantly changed and adapted. The term room laboratory is therefore used to describe a room that is continuously designed, changed and further developed by the users. This use of space is different from classic seminar and learning rooms and lecture halls, which usually specify a single - unchanging - room setting for use and are not or only limitedly geared towards active learning space design by students and teachers. Room laboratories are primarily integrated directly into teaching operations in the sense of real laboratories and often address formal and informal settings, but can also be used independently as a laboratory for teaching/learning settings for learning space research and further training purposes.
The methods collected are particularly suitable in a space laboratory setting in the sense of a real laboratory, but can also be used in space projects that aim at a new concept or one-off redesign and are not designed for continuous development or space evaluation. At the same time, the methods are an invitation to consider student participation and needs-based space adaptation in use in all learning space projects. This contributes to impact-oriented space offerings and allows for responses to emerging needs of students and future-oriented teaching.
In particular, university employees and teachers who are involved in both the interaction with students and in the planning processes of learning spaces are particularly well placed to place and implement these methods. Participatory, interdisciplinary planning processes should ideally go hand in hand with organization-wide concepts and consider university development, sustainability, digitalization strategy and learning space design together.