The industrial engineering lab is what they call it although it is really not a lab in the traditional sense. It is a large space which is separated into two units. One is an open space with many long tables and chairs, with one corner equipped with a few computers. And the walls have Internet connections, and in one end of the room there is a projector screen. Adjacent to the open room is a lecture/computer room which has a slanted floor design. Food and drink is generally prohibited in the ‘lab’ although sometimes students break the rule.

On the day when I talked to the engineering students, there were four groups of students in the open room, each doing very different things. Two of the larger groups (8 to 10 students) were doing event planning type of things for their department or student organization. One smaller group (about 4 students) was doing their coursework assignment together. One group was doing project work.  I talked to the group which was planning events, and students told me they love this place because they don’t have to fight with the rest of the students on campus for spaces. One student told me there’s no need to go to other places within the campus because this place is so great. They said they also used the library study space, but only when they studied individually. But the ‘lab’ is certainly a place they feel they belong to. I was told by a department staff that such a space is rare even within the engineering faculty, and people would be very ‘envious’ if they knew about it. Technically speaking the space belongs to the university, so there is always the fear that the university would take it back one day and redistribute it among the departments. This fear is not totally imagined because the curriculum reform has already flattened the 1^st year curriculum structure of the faculty, so that the students are no longer grouped into individual departments upon entering the faculty. Many of the first year courses are now co-taught by teaching staff from different departments, and so it has huge implications for resource allocation, and possibly space management.

The ‘Common Room’ is what people call it. It is located on the 1^st floor of the Education Faculty building. It is a place designated for all the post-graduate students within the faculty. The Education Faculty is unique because it doesn’t have any departmental structure; it is just one large faculty operating on different academic themes. Space is always a major issue within the faculty because it is so limited comparing to the Engineering Faculty which has a much longer history. This is why such a space seems even more precious, and more or less reflects how much the faculty values its post-graduate student body or research matters in general. It is not a very large space, about the size of a small 20 student classroom. Its setting is like a ‘lounge’ space where students can have a coffee break, and read newspapers. In fact, during lunch time, many students would bring their lunch there to eat. Yet it is more than that because it’s got projector screens and projectors, and newspaper racks with all sorts of research periodicals. It is an informal space where researchers gather freely and very often discuss their research with each other over a cup of coffee or sandwich. The source of light is good there and it is shielded from the busy environments outside. I personally found it a much better place to have a more serious or intellectual conversation comparing to Star Bucks or the like. It is perhaps also because people who go there are all researchers, and it is very easy to find common topics and interest. Since most of the postgraduate students were from Mainland China and overseas, they were surprised to hear when I told them such kind of space is actually rare among other faculties. Some of them told me they felt very lucky to have such a space entirely dedicated to them.

One is the ‘Learning Center’ attached to the library ground floor. It was one of the more formally set up learning space that allows ‘conversation’, yet when I visited on a few occasions, most people there were very silent, minding their own business, and most of them work individually.    The text sign post at the entrance spot clearly says that conversation is allowed, but there were bigger and more graphical signs that asked the occupants to keep their voice down.  And there was also the fact that people simply missed these signs and acted according to the norm/protocol of the place, which was indeed a space within the library, a traditionally ‘silent’ space. 

Adjacent to the library and the ‘Learning Center’ was the Star Bucks café.  It has a very spacious and open back yard space.  Quite a few people bring their work there while enjoying a cup of coffee and some snacks, but they don’t tend to stay there very long comparing to the indoor spaces such as the library or the Learning Center.  The music there can be quite loud sometimes, and during lunch hours or break time, the space is completely packed with people.  As evening time approaches, the relatively dim lighting can be too relaxing for the eye, so the hours of which it serves as a reasonably ideal space for learning is very limited.  However, it is a great place to socialize and chat, and people go there to have a break from work, including myself.  

The 2^nd floor of the Student Union building is a very large space.  It is one floor above the cafeteria.   There was a book store, a Xerox machine room.  Yet there was only one long table, and two very small round tables where student can work.  The students I talked to were from the engineering faculty which building is opposite to the SU building.  When I asked them whether they think the tables are enough, they said they would like to have more study areas, because they need places to do project type of work, and such kinds of spaces is always scarce within the campus.  The building itself is run by the Student Union/student committee, and it seems that they still haven’t figured out how to use the space, so it was deserted at least for 2 years if not more.  Last I heard, there was finally plans to convert the place into a sort of café space, so at least, there’ll be more tables.  

In comparison to the earlier classroom design workshops, a few more faculty members turned up, external consultants and architects of the project were there because of their obvious involvement,  and that may also explained the presence of a few administrative staff, among them , two in charge of student affairs and developments, and the Vice Chancellor also showed up towards the end.  In a nutshell, all the important figures were present, so in a sense, the event was already a sort of mandated practice which I suppose belonged to the category of ‘important publicity events’ of the university.  Yet extremely limited number of student participants turned up.  There was virtually no undergraduate students there, and among the four postgraduate students who were present, two came because they were some what involved with the project not because they had a genuine concern for the issue as one confessed to me after the event.  Another was an overseas ‘White’ student who was clearly interested in the subject. Among the three, only one was a local student.   I was the 2^nd local PGS there because of my research interest.   The reason I’m putting forth these details is because I believe it says a lot about the existing culture of the place and the sort of values people embody in such a space.  One would think that issues like this sort will appeal to a larger audience in comparison with earlier workshops which focuses more on teaching and learning specific matters.  And consultative workshops like this one which tries to engage the whole community to voice out their concerns is historically rare in this particular institute, as well as other tertiary institutes in the region.   In fact, in the past, the student organizations will have to fight for a chance to have their voice included in any major decision making events of the university.  So on one level I was surprised that none of the student organizations sent their representatives over which makes one wonder what students were up to these days apart from their busy study and social lives.  On second thought, I wasn’t so surprised because the low student participation rate reflects the kinds of issues students are concerned with these days, and the campus development seems to fall short of their top priority things.  I remembered I was reading a report dated a few years back, and it shows that local students and teachers regarded the maintenance of law and order to be the most important issues, and others such as social equality, tolerance for diversity and environment were on the bottom.  I think this sort of value doesn’t get changed much even as these students advance to tertiary education or enter the work force.  Now that reminds me that I don’t really know what sort of value this university embrace or represent.  In fact, do we have any values that this university upholds as a whole?  It would be interesting to find out by conducting a similar survey among the HKU students and staff. It would be a very interesting study. 

I wondered to what extent the university really understood what my friend and others were talking about when they demand the furnitures to be movable and more flexible. My suspicion was that if they had understood that the issue was largely a teaching and learning one, rather than what new model of tables and chairs to buy, they would have made a different decision. Further still, if they understood or someone had informed them about how space can impact on teaching and learning experiences, they might even change their approach to space design when thinking about re-furbishing old classrooms.

Spaces are never just simple places where objects were placed. Even an empty space conveys certain ideas, certain norms of practice, and are embedded with people’s values, beliefs, memories and emotions.

Although each faculty came up with slightly different designs, there were some common features.  Group discussion and group work friendly furnitures and installations were one of them, and segmentation of the theatre into different functional areas was also common.   Some even suggested to create a ‘real’ theatre where stage performance can be carried out.  Some also talked about the ‘break out’ area where students can easily leave the lecture space and enter into a more sociable space to carry on discussions or conversation among themselves or with the lecturer.

But the individual differences among the different participants in terms of how they interpret the common themes/features and drew their classroom models were also very interesting.   For example, some participants focused more on what sort of furniture options were available for small size group work, while did not think about the space in general, how it might or might not encourage inter-group interactions.  In fact, one of the design was such that students would be segregated into small units of three, and would be seated in a space that would make it difficult for them to move around.

Others have similar designs but worked on transforming existing uni-directional seatings in a lecture theatre into turnable seats, so students can turn around and form a small discussion group of 4 people.  In such design, there were more discussion about teaching and learning, such as how a lecture can be conducted into different parts, where there’d be some lecture time and there’d be group work time, and how such need for flexibility can be incorporated into the space design.  There were also discussion about how a lecturer can navigate through such a space, so that he/she can actively participate and facilitate student discussions.

My general observation was that the focus on teaching and learning issues was largely on group discussion types of learning activities which many of the participants seemed to take it as almost a given condition in the future classrooms.  What I feel was missing was a discussion among the participants about their individual perspective and interpretation of the specific role, function and significance group discussion carry in their teaching, and in students’ learning.  They seemed to assume that everyone understands group discussion in the same way, which I doubt very much.  My second thought was that since this workshop was such a rare opportunity that academic staff would gather and work in a team situation,  it was almost a pity that they didn’t really go further to discuss, debate and challenge each others belief and understanding on more fundamental issues.

So this was an irony I spotted in all this which was that although everyone was talking about student collaborative learning and group discussions, the participants from the three faculties did not talk to each other, left along challenging each other from their own comfort zone.  Most of them had only worked within their own group and showed little interest to interact and talk with people from other groups.  So at the end, there was still this large gap of intellectual exchange left among all the participants.

People are the hardest things to mobilize, especially in our ultra restless society when everyone’s got dozens of things on their to do list. I see this issue as not much different when we talk about motivating the students, to get them to not just participate passively in classes, but actually get some action going, engage them in learning activities.

Coming back to the workshop thing. The first interesting thing I’d observed was that the venue is not an exactly convenient, easy to find and spot space. It’s actually hidden away in one of those really old buildings which have heavy walls and compartmentalized rooms. Although it is convenient to the organizer because their office is located in the same building, just two floors above. The feeling to the environment is uninviting, enclosed, and the room was actually located at the end of the corridor, making it even more unambiguous. There is nothing to mention about the room that host the workshop, just an ordinary, rectangular shape room with movable tables and chairs.

In the early half of the workshop, the facilitator invited the participants to brainstorm ideas by asking them to come up with keywords that describe their ideal classrooms. Many of them mentioned the informal settings such as comfort, friendliness and warmth. And then they were asked to come up with the ‘non-classroom’ equivalents from their daily experiences. Places like cafes, Karaoke box, and even fish bowl was mentioned. Of course all these spaces exude a sense of informality and relaxation, and to me, sometimes can be too passive and too relaxing.

The interesting thing occurred when the staff were asked to include the functional features in their ideal classroom. The list became longer. Many high tech installations (movable furnitures, wireless connection), and state of the art presentation gadgets were on the list. All of a sudden, the ideas gone totally inconsistent with the earlier visions of the ‘comfort zone’. To me, the list of things don’t quite fit with those earlier examples of ‘non-classroom’ places. For one, these places don’t have a whole lot of ‘action’ oriented functional elements. I thought this area of tension/contradiction between a functional classroom and a sociable and relaxing classroom was largely missed by the participants, and which should be discussed and debated vigorously.   I would imagine there will be a lot more tension/contradictions exist among the workshop participants who came from the three faculties, who also share different beliefs, different practices and different work cultures.  People need to realize and understand these areas of differences, before they attempt to negotiate a common ground on important issues like classroom design.

To be continued…

One of the main features of the new campus is the creation of space for the “Learning Commons”. It’s a rather new concept within higher education institutes, but basically has emerged in the recent years together with many of the reform and rethinking about what higher education should be like in today’s world and looking ahead in the future. It is basically to re-examine teaching and learning activities as they are occurring and changing now, and taking that out of the traditional classroom learning framework. To me the biggest difference from the old types of learning spaces is that these new learning spaces have a clear design objective which is to create environment conducive to collaborative learning styles and social activities. Most of them are also designed as spaces that can be operated on a 24/7 basis, taking into the consideration of the highly irregular learning and working hours of today’s student population. We have to understand that students do not only learn during their normal classroom hours.

Many students after a class or a lecture would have to go off and spend double or triple or more of that time to engage in group and individual learning. They are often doing some kind of research like activities, for example, searching for extra information and reading material, have brainstorming and discussions with peers, doing handy or craftsmen work sometimes etc.

Actually, today’s learning activities has a huge learning by doing component, such as projects and group works, as well as field work and internship programs.

And internationalized universities such as HKU, have a diversified student body, meaning, not only in terms of different ethnic groups, but at the same time, different age and social background students, whether undergraduate or postgraduate, full time or part time. They all have very different learning styles and work schedules.

Another important feature and the final one I want to mention here is the hybrid-ness of the learning environment of a Learning Commons. By that I mean two levels, one is the highly embeddedness of information and communication technologies within these spaces. If you will, it is both a virtual and physical learning space, where people will be using a lot of the IT facilities and electronic resources, together with their own mobile devices, along side physical activities such as face to face discussion. And second, it is a space that combines the learning and social/cultural elements, such as spaces for people to relax, eat, drink, sleep, socialize and of course learning too.

Photo courtesy: Brock University website:http://www.library.brocku.ca/learningcommons/?page_id=9

The University of Hong Kong campus is quite a unique space because it is located on a hill and the buildings are scattered at various levels along the hill side. It is also representative of the urban landscape of Hong Kong, especially that of the Hong Kong island because of its ‘hilly’ landscape.

To navigate in such landscape is therefore very interesting because you are always walking up and down, walking through different layers of ground in order to get to a particular spot or building area. A ground floor for building A could be the 1st floor for building B and the lower ground for building C. And one thing that people here will tell you is that it is very difficult to give directions to first time visitors because you cannot say walk down one block and turn left then walk two more blocks then turn right.

Unlike buildings that stand alone in a relatively flat landscape, buildings at HKU are interconnected and sometimes buildings are within buildings, making it very difficult to separate them visually. And even physically you would experience walking through a building and not knowing you are entering into a different building. Obviously with such physical space and arrangment, stairways and path ways are everywhere acting as the connection and transitional spaces. In terms of convenience, people who carry lots of books or are physically challenged or who are simply in a hurry may find it a nusance because traveling in campus is not a straight away business. But for me, such irregular and hybrid landscape is much more interesting. I still very much enjoy a leisure walk around the campus after lunch and are surprised by new places and hidden spots all the time even after all these years. Again, if you are thinking of buildings and physical space as having only pure functional purposes, this may not be a desirable feature at all. Because people want to get things done and get to places quickly and will not find such ’surprises’ or discovery amusing not to mention the educational value in such activities.