Designing Academic Technology-Rich Spaces to Facilitate Cross-Departmental Interactions

• In Event: Space and Technologies for Learning in Schools, Museums, and Workplaces: Recent Approaches in Design-Based Research

Abstract

Objective

This study examines the impact of a new, technology-enabled interdisciplinary academic facility for university students and faculty. This facility was designed to foster interdisciplinary collaboration, innovation, and learning across schools with programs in education, arts and media, and engineering and computer science with flexible open spaces and ubiquitous projection and whiteboards. In this presentation we will describe the facility’s architectural and technological program rationale and provide evidence demonstrating how academic activities (teaching, learning, and research) have changed as a result of the relocation to the new shared space.

Perspective

We use Harrison & Dourish’s (1996) notion of space and place (socially appropriated space), and on a group cognition model (Stahl, 2006) in which small group interaction over shared representations forms the basis for learning. Our research question is how the physical space and its technological affordances appear to successfully or unsuccessfully support their intended role in fostering generative group interactions, especially across academic disciplines and departments.

Methods and Data

Our research method is based on descriptive cases and cross-case comparison between programs’ prior spaces and the new shared space. These cases are constructed through observations conducted in half hour sessions, corresponding to scheduled uses such as the beginnings or endings of classes and events. Observations prior to the move recorded configuration and use of differentiated spaces like research and computer labs, classrooms, and common areas. Following the move to the new facility (which opens in August 2013), additional observations will be conducted and will be triangulated with surveys via department email lists of users of the space.
The cross-case comparison will focus on specific designed elements developed over six months by architects, faculty and administrators from four university colleges. Data on designed elements have been gathered through participant observation and a document analysis of the architectural design process.
Combined with the data from observations and surveys, this will provide opportunities to study user interactions across disciplines in flexible collaboration spaces and social spaces designed around classrooms and laboratories. In addition, the inclusion of ubiquitous digital projection will provide opportunities to observe how users support collaboration using digital artifacts and share visualization across groups.

Results and Implications

Our data already supports initial conclusions that motivated the design process, namely, that there is minimal contact between members of the various departments and that classes generally provide minimal opportunity for informal collaboration before or after class in the existing spaces. The one exception is a research lab that is occasionally used for instruction. In addition, there are limited opportunities for informal social encounters in current classrooms, faculty offices, and student laboratory space. Further, few of these spaces provide displays of student or faculty work. Additionally, users complain about the difficulty of sharing digital products. Implications for the study may include strategies to make the space ‘stickier’ for users to encourage more informal interaction and the formation of weak ties (Granovetter, 1973), and the use of technologies as mediating artifacts for group cognition.

Authors

• Christopher Hoadley, New York University

• Matthew Lucas, New York University