Personalised Learning Spaces

Personalised Learning: Personalising Space (2007) Both of the following case studies relate to schools which radically transformed the learning experience for students and then dealt with the redesign of learning spaces afterwards. Ideally we could design spaces fit for learning in the 21st century and then occupy them. In reality, personalised learning and the spaces in which it occurs evolve together over time. In 2000 I tried to predict how learning might look in the future. I was convinced, as I still am, that… • every child would have their own laptop or similar device with a permanent internet connection. • The diversity of approaches on the internet would lead to greater diversity of work and pace from the students. This would challenge the traditional role of the teacher and require students to be more self managing / peer managing. Having predicted the key features, the next step was to set up a trial space and begin testing the accuracy of my predictions. Setting up the equipment would take a few weeks but transforming working practices, retraining teachers and students would take many years so we decided to start with one group and use this as a learning laboratory. We designed a space in which most subjects could be delivered so that the equipment and infrastructure requirements were reduced. It quickly became apparent that having the students remain in one ‘laptop area’ and the staff come to them was the best aspect of the design as it provided much more stability for the students, much less time setting up and closing down and encouraged the teachers to use internet resources rather than traditional resources (that they would have to carry !) In order to accelerate creativity we provided students with teacher training, divided up the learning objectives between the students and then gave them the freedom to deliver the learning in any way they wanted to, providing they could demonstrate how many children had learned what they were teaching. Within six months, students creativity began putting strains on the ICT provision, room design and surrounding spaces. Student’s engagement with their learning and the progress they were making were both outstanding but the traditional classroom design was placing considerable restrictions on their growing aspiration. Over the next few years we expanded to more groups and developed a suite of rooms with varied provision in each. We also had to expand and redesign the ICT technicians area into a helpdesk facility. We converted art, music and technology areas to allow for students released from the laptop suite to complete multimedia work. Over the subsequent three years, the diversity of student approach continued to increase as did the requirement for diverse spaces. Students had spent two years delivering peer learning: researching content on the internet, understanding it well enough to teach it to the class and then assessing other’s progress. They had developed most of the skills required for independent working and so now needed a framework that would encourage them to develop their competencies. We used an

early form of PbyP (Personalisation by Pieces) as the framework for the development and then allowed students to choose the content of their curriculum themselves. PbyP ensured that they were able to evidence progress and have this progress assessed by their peers even though the subject content, pace and approach varied from student to student. Progress was rapid with all of the thirteen year old students achieving a grade C GCSE equivalent qualification after only five weeks of work within their chosen subject. Such work increasingly required large spaces with two or three classes combined into one working area and smaller facilities for quiet film and audio recording as well as meeting rooms for students. Innovative software solutions allowed teachers to monitor location, live work and progression of students even if they were dispersed around the school. Despite this ability to use the whole site, a significant constraint against further development was the need to run a ‘traditional’ school in the same building. Expansion was limited by the rooming needs of the surrounding departments and the perception that departments needed to be clustered around staff areas. We needed to develop display strategies and student leadership schemes to manage these ‘laptop areas’ as they were effectively owned by students and so students needed ways of taking control of the spaces. Paul Kelly, headteacher of Monkseaton Secondary School also found that it was through conducting work using an entirely different approach to teaching that he was able to change the mindset of teachers away from classrooms and more towards open flexible spaces. The second case study provides further illustration of the need for building design to be led by establishing changes in pedagogy. In The Five Islands School on the Isles of Scilly, we needed to develop strategies that would allow students to experience diversity of provision despite their isolated location and the small number of staff. Once again we used PbyP to provide the framework for the development of a competency based curriculum. With PbyP having progressed onto the web since the Eggbuckland Project, it was now possible for students to have their work assessed by students on the mainland which added additional appeal and diversity to the provision immediately. Headteacher Andrew Penman released half a day from the timetable and designed the ‘Federated Enrichment Afternoon’ so that it would provide opportunities to develop competencies. As a federated all through school this initiative had to provide genuinely challenging activities for students at all school ages that would allow them to record progress. The school’s design is based on a model of classes of 30, mixed age, in the primary phase and classes of between 10 and 20 in the secondary phase to allow them to teach subjects in year groups despite small numbers. In the first few months of the project it became clear that the class structure in the primary phase made genuine personalisation extremely difficult as different paces and activities had to overlap and students had to move between classes that were separated by areas that could not be efficiently supervised. In the secondary phase the opposite problem emerged in that popular courses were restricted in terms of space and those requiring specialist facilities of any kind had to be scheduled into six week modules to enable timetabling to occur.

The enrichment afternoon was considered by all to be a major success in terms of providing students with impressive diversity and yet with the rigour of assessed progress in competencies but modifications were agreed to take account of some of the space restrictions. The whole process opened up an excellent dialogue between primary and secondary colleagues and the contrasting models of space use that has called some to question how a new design for the school would function. The conclusions that are emerging bare striking similarity to those emerging from many of the other long standing projects in the UK that have attempted to use ICT as a vehicle for personalising or at least diversifying learning. Using the findings from my work in these contexts together with case studies of other schools I wrote future schools visions for the Microsoft BSF Envisioning guide in which I projected forwards to suggest how schools may eventually operate if true personalisation was achieved. These rather detailed descriptions are available through the Microsoft BSF team but some of the key features are described below. Student led services Students who are empowered to take an active role in their learning begin to question their democratic role within the school community and begin to require challenges that enable them to play an active and positive role. Ideally this requires the flexibility for them to determine and provide the services they need. In the microsociety schools in the US this has progressed to primary schools which are a fully functioning student led town. In BSF terms it is allowing expansion of professional student reception, library facilities, cafés, shops, radio, TV and office spaces. Some early schemes included such facilities but without the pedagogic rationale for their use, resulting in underutilisation of the spaces or the adoption of the facilities by keen staff. 1:1 provision facilities If you start from the assumption that every student will have their own device or ubiquitous access then the design of spaces and the need for ICT rooms require questioning. The need for an ICT helpdesk facility and the ability to handle student repair requests directly are critical. If the 1:1 device is a handheld or USB drive then there needs to be a strategy for the dispersal of access screens and dumb terminals that will have a considerable impact on the building design. Student movement As staff move increasingly away from the front of the class and more towards the mentor / facilitator role, the need for students to work on the same content at the same pace decreases as does the need for movement between areas at set times. This leads towards multifunction areas through which students can work. Such design has the added benefit of meeting the research findings of human scale education in which students perform much better when they feel part of a stable community of between 90 and 140 others. Removing the need for student movement then returns the wasted circulation space for more productive use as well as pushing up the room usage rates and hence allowing for more active spaces. Learning frameworks

Schools provide local hubs for learning and so offer a range of activities. Clearly if the match between activities and need is not a good one then students are at risk of slipping through the net. To avoid this, schools need to develop competency frameworks that allow tracking. This then means that the school can offer ranges of provision which allow learners to progress to greater diversity and independence seamlessly as they demonstrate increasing competence. Passive supervision, physical presence and online supervision can use assistive technology that is integrated into the building. Buildings that contain 21st century learning provision will not function efficiently if occupied by a school that is teaching a traditional curriculum. Similarly, a school built to the Victorian design of separate subjects in separate classrooms will not efficiently enable the delivery of 21st century learning. The key, I believe, is to accelerate the development of new pedagogy in the school and generate the understanding in both teachers and students, of how learning spaces need to adapt. One of the most effective ways of accelerating this is through the visiting existing practice. Currently, however, visits and exemplars tend to concentrate on the building design rather than the pedagogy which is driving it. I look forward to the day that school visits are to talk to frustrated, forward looking staff in ancient schools who are coping with restrictions but achieving transformation of pedagogy, rather than to shiny new schools containing staff who are already planning to add more dividing walls.