As part of the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership "Learning and Teaching Spaces in Higher Education" (LTSHE; www.evalag.de/ltshe/ ), evalag, together with the University of Aveiro, carried out an analysis of how the Portuguese and German higher education systems deal with the design and implementation of high-quality learning and teaching spaces (L&L spaces) (cf. Leiber, T., Carlos, V., Bruckmann, S. & Rosa, M. (2021) Principles of design and implementation of Learning and Teaching spaces: lessons learnt from German and Portuguese higher education. In: Proceedings ICERI2021 - 14th Annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation, online event, Seville, Spain, 8-10 November 2021, pp. 111-120).
The study shows that the higher education policies of the two European Higher Education Area (EHEA) countries and the institutional guidelines of their higher education institutions specify very few legal requirements, administrative regulations or strategic objectives on these topics. Rather, L&L spaces activities are usually institution-specific, time-limited projects that imply limited opportunities for inter-institutional and system-wide comparison and benchlearning.
So far, the LTSHE project has derived the following preliminary principles for the design and implementation of higher education L&L spaces:
- The importance of L&L spaces ("third pedagogue") requires that their design and implementation should be considered a core strategic area of institutional policy.
- In order to fulfil pedagogical requirements, the design of learning and learning spaces must be based on contemporary knowledge of learning and learning processes. For example, future-oriented learning environments must be conceived according to "user-centred design" so that users can intuitively understand, use and experience the learning and teaching spaces in a multi-sensory way. Students should act as co-creators of knowledge and skills rather than passive recipients, and teachers as initiators of individual learning processes rather than mere instructors. Accordingly, L&D spaces should support different purposes, such as individual and collaborative work, work with technology and different types of informal learning.
- Innovative L&D spaces need to be equipped with digital infrastructures that ensure the necessary flexibility and modularity of physical, hybrid and virtual uses.
- Innovative L&L spaces must be sustainably supported, financed and subjected to continuous quality improvement processes at an organisational level.