Mosaic Initiative – Indiana University's Active Learning Initiative

Rethinking How We Assign Classrooms: A Pilot

Posted on October 23, 2023 by Samuel Evola

Eight years ago, Indiana University launched the Mosaic Initiative to support innovative classroom design, research, and active learning in all Indiana University classrooms. As we began to transform classrooms and teaching practices, we began to also explore systems associated with teaching and classrooms, such as scheduling classrooms, that were often just as impactful to student learning experiences as the instructional choices that their faculty were making.

The Challenge
It has proven a challenge for most universities to schedule faculty consistently in classrooms that support their active-learning approaches. For example, if an instructor wanted to use collaborative learning, they would be frustrated to be scheduled in a lecture hall—a space where it might be difficult to gather students for group work. Was there a way, we frequently asked, to schedule faculty in the classrooms they wanted to teach in? Could we design a system to do so consistently? Was it possible consider teaching approaches over proximity or precedence in matching instructor to classroom? We explored this idea recently with the Registrar and a group of Mosaic Faculty Fellows on the IUPUI campus and, out of that session, came up with a plan for a pilot to explore this very idea. The initial phases of the pilot study have been completed, and we’re excited to report our preliminary findings!

Six IU employees gather in desks in a semicircle to discuss classroom assignments — Mosaic Fellows discuss room scheduling with colleagues from the Registrar’s office, May 2023

Promising Results
We designed and distributed a survey in summer 2023 asking 32 Senior Mosaic Fellows to request classrooms for spring 2024 on the basis of the teaching styles they adopt. The survey asked faculty for the details of the classes they would teach (size, time, etc.), and asked them to use IU’s classroom database to identify a room they would like to teach in for the upcoming term. Of the faculty who were invited to participate, more than half of them responded. There were concrete, useable room requests in each instructor’s submission and no conflicts between instructors’ requested times and days. Besides these results, two notable features emerged out of the faculty responses.

Every submission mentioned furniture and space, frequently with reference to student groupings. Participants specifically mentioned things like “movable desks,” “tables grouped in 4s,” and “the ability to reconfigure the seating.”
Instructors overwhelmingly requested ways to share and display student work. Respondents pointed to “multiple dry erase boards,” the ability for students to share their computer screens, and other technologies like “flip charts.”

Fuller answers are available in Appendix 2 of the linked evaluation, compiled after the pilot was completed. But other than sheer participation, no other patterns seemed as marked as these two, which emerged overwhelmingly from instructors’ answers.

Conclusions & Next Steps
We were excited to have such robust data, for two reasons. First, it demonstrates that it is, in fact, possible to align teaching approaches and room assignments. Faculty were enthusiastic about the chance to participate, and the Registrar has reported that the process may have actually saved time in the room-assignment workflow. Second, it pointed to and made explicit patterns we have observed over the last eight years. Furniture and displays may seem like rudimentary technology, but they are frequently tools that instructors point to as they think about remaking their teaching.

Perhaps most exciting is that the success of this initial run has prompted us to continue the pilot into the upcoming two semesters. We’ll extend the same room-selection invitation for the spring 2024 and summer 2024 sessions, providing the opportunity to receive more feedback from instructors and staff members as to how such a procedure affects their workflow. Faced with the consistent wondering of whether we can get teachers into classrooms more suited to their approaches, we’ve discovered that, at least on a small scale, we can arrange things so as to do just that. We’re excited at this prospect. Take a look at the fuller evaluation of our procedure, and stay tuned for what the next two semesters’ worth of trial bring!

Our full report is available here.

Samuel Evola is a PhD candidate in the Department of English at Indiana University, Bloomington. He specializes in cognitive and empirical approaches to literary study, with a focus on Victorian fiction. His also teaches a self-designed composition course that asks students to answer the question “What is college good for?”

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Beyond a Land Acknowledgement: Why Universities are Creating Indigenous Campus Spaces

Posted on September 19, 2023 by Lydia Nixon

Universities across North America and Australia have seen a recent push to establish cultural spaces for Indigenous* students on college campuses. While it is common practice for universities to set aside cultural centers as gathering places for students of shared ethnicities and backgrounds, these new spaces are more than merely a dedicated room or house: they are carefully designed to reflect the cultural history and knowledge of the Indigenous peoples on whose traditional lands the universities are built. Some such spaces have been around for longer (see Evergreen State College’s s’gʷi gʷi ʔ altxʷ / House of Welcome, established in 1995, and the University of Southern Mississippi’s Medicine Wheel Garden created in 2005, for example), but we have seen an uptick in the creation of these spaces within the last few years as settler nations are beginning to reckon with the history of colonial violence. Many Canadian universities have created, or are in the process of creating, these spaces as a direct response to the Calls to Action listed in the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Report, and the United States may well be on the cusp of a similar influx, as the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative published Volume 1 of its own report on Native American boarding schools just last year.

Today’s blog post takes a look at this recent development, highlighting some of these spaces across Canada, the United States, and Australia, and identifying some commonalities and priorities among the spaces.

Designing Indigenous Campus Spaces

These new campus spaces are typically designed with two goals in mind: to reflect the history and cultural traditions of the Indigenous peoples who have occupied the land in the past and present, and to create a space where Indigenous students can feel connected to their cultural heritage while on campus.

Image is of a garden of native plants arranged in concentric circles. A wall in the background contains a mural. — The Healing Garden at San Diego State University was designed in collaboration with members of Indigenous communities including the Kumeyaay Nation, the Nahua, and the Mixtec. Photo from the SDSU website.

The first goal, reflecting history and cultural traditions, can be seen as an extension of a land acknowledgment: these spaces endeavor to bring to life a past that has been historically erased by settler colonialism. One common approach is to incorporate native plants that were historically used for medicinal, ceremonial, or creative purposes (see the Healing Garden at San Diego State University and the Ethnobotany Garden at the University of Montana, for example). This incorporation of native plants works to reflect the place-based way of life practiced among many Indigenous communities.

A few universities have undertaken to reflect this attentiveness to place in their holistic design, allowing the natural features of the landscape to guide their design process (see Bilya Marlee at the University of Western Australia and University of Toronto’s acknowledgement of Taddle Creek, for example).

Image is of a semi-circle bench surrounding a small grove of trees outside a large university building. — Just outside the University of Western Australia’s Bilya Marlee building, this grove of marri trees is one of the natural landscape features that became the basis for the building design. Photo by Robert Frith.

Another common approach is to model the architectural design after traditional structures that were significant to the Indigenous communities (see the canoe design of Odeyto student center at Seneca College, Queen’s University’s wigwam design, and Western Washington University’s Coast Salish longhouse design).

Image is of the outside of a well-lit building. The structure resembles that of an upturned canoe. — Odeyto student center at Seneca College. Photo by Tom Arban.

Indigenous gathering space at Queen’s University, modeled after the traditional Anishinaabe wigwam design. Photo by Emily Elliot for Kingstonist.

These spaces modeled after traditional structures tend to be a much bigger undertaking, so, among the universities creating smaller-scale spaces, it is also common to see culturally significant shapes or symbols used as the basis for the design (see the Two Row Wampum design at Queen’s University’s outdoor space, the turtle design at Loyalist College’s A’nó:wara Learning Circle, Montana State University’s drum room, and Curtin University’s yarning circle design, for example).

Image is of an outdoor space with a sparse wooden structure and stone seating arranged in a semi-circle around a stone floor containing a turtle pattern and a multi-colored medicine wheel design. — Loyalist College’s A’nó:wara Learning Circle was named for the Mohawk word for turtle. The figure of the turtle also serves as the basis of the design. Photo from the Loyalist College website.

Along with bringing the past to life, the other common goal for these spaces is to emphasize the continued presence of Indigenous people, Indigenous cultural practices, and Indigenous knowledge—typically with an eye toward the needs of current and future Indigenous students. For example, many universities have designed spaces that would allow Indigenous students and/or community members to gather for ceremonies or other cultural practices (see the Indigenous Sharing and Learning Center at Laurentian College and the yarning circle at University of Newcastle, for example).

Image is of large stones for seating arranged in a circle around a stone fire pit. — The yarning circle at University of Newcastle is designed to be a space for talking, educating, and sharing stories. According to the University of Newcastle’s website, “Yarning for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people was, and still is, a conversational process that involves the telling of stories as a way of passing on cultural knowledge.” Photo from University of Newcastle’s website.

Many spaces are also designed for educational purposes: including, for example, a circular design with ample seating to allow for classes to be held in these spaces (see the Indigenous Circle at McMaster University and the University of Wollongong’s yarning circle). Some are even designed with specific educational uses in mind, such as teaching students how to cultivate and use native plants (see the gardens at Stanford University, UC Berkeley, and the University of British Columbia), or involving students in the creation of the space itself (see Montana State University).

Corn, beans, and squash growing in the stacked method in UC Berkeley’s Indigenous Community Learning Garden. Photo by Adam Sings in the Timber.

Image is of an outdoor space with a high tables and chairs arranged in a semi-circle around the fire pit - an intricately designed metal structure. — The fire pit and yarning circle at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Photo from the University of Wollongong website.

Image is of an outdoor space. Stones for seating are arranged in a tiered semi-circle, facing a large, multi-colored stone in the design of a medicine wheel. — The Karahakon Kateweienstha (Learning in the Forest) Indigenous Circle at McMaster University. Photo from McMaster University’s website.

Why Indigenous Spaces?

But perhaps even more important than any particular design feature is the process that universities are engaging in to develop these designs. In nearly all of the spaces included in this blog post, the committees responsible for creating these spaces worked closely with Indigenous community members, faculty, and/or students to ensure that the space is not merely a performative gesture, but that it both accurately reflects the relevant cultural history and is designed to facilitate a lively student and community presence in these spaces. For example, the University of Newcastle in Australia consulted with Elder in Residence, Aunty Bronwyn Chambers, in regard to the design, placement, and naming of their yarning circle, nganggali ngara ngura (Talking Listening Place). UC Davis similarly consulted with Patwin elder Bill Wright, along with other members of the Native American community on campus, to create the Native American Contemplative Garden in response to the discovery of Patwin remains on the UC Davis campus. The University of Toronto established an advisory committee that included Indigenous students, faculty, staff, and representatives of the Elders’ circle. Some universities have prioritized hiring Indigenous artists and architects to lead the design process, including Lambton College, whose current project is being led by Wanda Dalla Costa, the first First Nation female architect in Canada.

This process and attention to design is of utmost importance, as educational institutions are particularly implicated in the history of violence against Indigenous people. Kevin Brown, former program specialist at the Indigenous Nations Library Program at the University of New Mexico, explains that this problematic history has an ongoing negative impact on Indigenous students’ educational experience, particularly for the way that “long held views of Indigenous people in America as either extinct or should be bounded within reservation limits are prominent tropes Indigenous students face on university campuses” (58). In other words, the university system in settler nations continues to be complicit in the notion that Indigenous students may only participate in postsecondary education if they assimilate to Western modes of education.

Many universities have thus prioritized designing spaces that, through their architecture, artistic elements, and potential uses, will actively challenge the historical practice of educational institutions working to strip Indigenous people of their culture, traditions, and language. By making visible the past and presence of Indigenous people and communities, the spaces highlighted in this blog post hope to set a precedent for Indigenous students to remain connected to their history, traditions, culture, and communities throughout the duration of their post-secondary education.

The need for this connection is directly related to the success of Indigenous students on university campuses. For many Indigenous students, postsecondary education comes with a complex set of challenges deriving both from the university system and their own communities. Though it is perhaps less obvious, the campus space itself—the buildings, outdoor spaces, and campus layout—plays a role in students’ education: either working to cultivate a sense of belonging among students, or creating the sense that students from non-Western cultural backgrounds are not welcome in this space. As Kevin Brown explains, “an Indigenous student on a university campus may feel alienated and unsafe due to the current built environment and interaction with non-Indigenous peoples” (57). This can be directly traced to the underlying structures of colonialism, Brown argues: “the constructed university environment overlays the memories of Indigenous people and at times erases, ignores, and subdues Indigenous existence” (57). Writing from his own experience, Derek Kamakanaaloha Soong, an undergraduate at NYU, argues for the need for not only “a curriculum tailored to the needs of Native students” but also a space “where cultural traditions can find a home”. By creating such spaces, universities are taking steps to support the educational success of their students. As Robin Zape-tah-hol-ah, a University of Oklahoma professor and citizen of the Kiowa tribe of Oklahoma, explained in a 2020 contribution to Higher Education Today: “it is our cultural values that guide and motivate Native American students to pursue higher education.”

The Next Step

Cultural centers have been an important step toward creating a more inclusive campus environment. Land acknowledgements, too, have been crucial for beginning to rectify the ways that postsecondary institutions in settler nations have been complicit in the removal of Indigenous people and the erasure of Indigenous cultures. But what many universities are recognizing is that these are only pieces of a larger, complex, and ongoing process. The practice of land acknowledgements has drawn criticism in recent years for its performativity, and, as Brown and others have demonstrated, cultural centers come with their own set of limitations. Creating Indigenous spaces might be seen as the next step—something beyond a land acknowledgement—in decolonizing Western educational institutions (and decolonizing, here, is meant not in the metaphorical sense, but in the very real sense of identifying and seeking to undo the ways postsecondary educational institutions continue to be complicit in colonial harm). By creating spaces to facilitate meaningful connections to culture and community, universities are demonstrating their commitment to prioritizing the educational success of Indigenous students—and doing so on the students’ terms.

Interested in collaborating?

This blog post began simply out of a curiosity about Indigenous campus spaces: who is creating them? what do they look like? and what is the motivation for creating such spaces? As it became clear that this is a growing trend, we decided to create a shareable list with the intention of allowing others to view, and potentially even contribute to, our observations of these spaces. Our goal is to simply provide a foundation for people with shared interests to connect, and perhaps even use this as a starting point for their own work on these spaces.

We invite you to view our findings here. To contribute to the list, email Dr. Tracey Birdwell at tracbird@iu.edu.

*Because this blog post discusses university spaces across Canada, the United States, and Australia, I use the term “Indigenous” when broadly referring to people groups who have inhabited the various lands since before colonization. Where relevant, I use regional terms or tribal nation names.

Lydia Nixon is a PhD student in the English department. She specializes in 20th-21st century American literature and ecocriticism, with a minor in Critical Race and Postcolonial Studies.

References

Brown, K. (2019). Creating culturally safe learning spaces and indigenizing higher education. Journal of Learning Spaces, 8(2), 57-65.
Kamakanaaloha Soong, D. Opinion: Native students need their own space at NYU. Washington Square News. https://nyunews.com/opinion/2022/10/14/native-student-space-nyu/
Zape-tah-hol-ah Minthorn, R. (2020, January 28). Indigenous perspectives on Native student challenges in higher education. Higher Education Today, American Council on Education®. https://www.higheredtoday.org/2020/01/28/indigenous-perspectives-native-student-challenges-higher-education/

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Outdoor Learning Spaces: Rethinking Learning Spaces on Your Campus

Posted on May 21, 2023 by Tracey Birdwell

Spring has officially sprung, which means it’s time to step outside and enjoy the fresh blooms of the season, especially on our campuses. I’m outdoors more often across our seven Indiana University campuses, as I’m sure you are too! When I’m outside, I’m not just enjoying the sun, I’m also thinking about how outdoor campus spaces could better support use by faculty and students for teaching and learning. Higher ed folks who work in learning spaces tend to focus on indoor environments, such as our classrooms and study spaces. As a community, we don’t often look outside to consider how the spaces in between our buildings might also support student learning.

Outdoor Learning Environments

More recently, many higher ed institutions have turned their attention to building outdoor learning environments. For the last few years, I have been collecting examples of outdoor classrooms and other outdoor learning spaces from institutions all over the world. In today’s blog I explore outdoor campus spaces in higher ed, their potential as learning and gathering spaces for students and instructors, and possible outcomes of an increased focus on outdoor spaces. I conclude by calling for members of higher ed communities to take part in intentional conversations with colleagues about reimagining how we could use outdoor spaces on our own campuses.

In 2019, I started to pay serious attention to outdoor learning spaces during tours of university campuses in Sydney, Australia. At the University New South Wales, the abundance of informal study spaces outdoors especially inspired my new interest. There were more outdoor spaces than I had seen on a college campus previously. I also saw an important feature that I had not seen before: power outlets (a feature that supports learning outside with devices!).

Image One: On the right: Table with power outlets on top. On the left: benches with individual table top and power outlet below.

Noticeably, several were positioned in shaded areas, under building overhangs or under trees to take advantage of the coolness away from the sun, many of them adorned with outlets where users can plug in their personal devices (circled in the images below). The shade over these spaces also served to protect device screens from glare.

Outdoor Learning Spaces in the United States

When I returned from Oz, I started looking for similar examples in the United States and realized that not only were there many creative outdoor study spaces (informal learning spaces) at American universities, but there were also some remarkable outdoor classrooms (formal learning spaces). What constitutes a study space vs. an outdoor classroom is an important distinction since there are numerous additional design concerns for space used for formal learning and instruction, such as issues concerning accessible audio, visibility of instructor and course content, and comfort against the elements.

In my search, two outdoor spaces stood out to me.

One was Tulane University’s outdoor classroom, a formal learning space, built in 2018. It was a student-led (and funded) project to create an “unplugged classroom” that eschewed modes of electronic presentation.

Image Three: Tulane's outdoor classroom with tables surrounded by benches. A chalkboard is nearby. — Image Three: Tulane’s outdoor classroom with tables surrounded by benches. A chalkboard is nearby.

Image Four: Wheaton's outdoor classroom with students on benches facing an instructor at a chalk board. — Image Four: Wheaton’s outdoor classroom with students on benches facing an instructor at a chalk board.

Another standout outdoor learning space is Wheaton College’s (in Massachusetts) outdoor classroom built like an outdoor lecture hall, with a front facing blackboard and stone benches in rows.

Both recreated a classroom environment outside, near campus buildings. Both highlighted low-tech solutions in a natural environment. Both are set in visible locations on their campuses.

Months into my search for examples of outdoor classrooms, the Coronavirus Pandemic struck. In response, higher ed institutions moved learning online to salvage the semester. Spring of 2020 ended with students online. All conversations for those early months of the pivot were about online learning.

Pivot to a New Learning Landscape

Over that summer, colleges and universities looked for solutions to continue normal operations. In many cases, we remained online; in others, we began to socially distance ourselves in our classrooms, by reducing seat count and wearing masks to make it work. As a less acknowledged stop-gap solution, many schools moved instruction outside to allow their students to safely learn while on campus.

Several universities constructed temporary classroom spaces (both Tripp Harris and I have written about this phenomenon: here, here, and here). Some novel outdoor learning spaces were designed as classrooms, others, as study spaces or dining areas, and still others creative social spaces. Such provisional spaces functioned to support outdoor teaching while also allowing for fewer people to be required to be inside campus buildings at any given time. Outdoor instruction and this ‘de-densification’ of indoor spaces helped schools stay open while remaining as Covid-safe as possible. But outdoor classrooms could allow more students to congregate too.

When creating their pandemic pivot outdoor classrooms, most schools took one of two approaches to outdoor instruction: Embrace the outdoors and unplug, or create a standard classroom, but outside.

An Outdoor Experiment Wanes

Outdoor spaces were popular in the fall of 2020, some even continued through the winter. But by 2021, they began to disappear. Though often successful at gathering students together, even as we socially distanced, perhaps they reminded us too much of their pandemic inspiration. As we moved indoors, our temporary outdoor spaces (the classrooms, the study spaces, the dining spaces, and the gathering spaces) disappeared. There were so many examples, I collected links of the many spaces across the United States.

After higher ed returned to in-person classes, the widespread conversation surrounding lessons learned from emergency online learning continues to evolve. But we stopped talking about going outside. Universities quickly ended their necessary efforts to learn outside.

As we went back inside and expanded our notions of online learning, and stopped thinking about our outdoor campus spaces, I started my own conversation about outdoor learning spaces through the Mosaic Initiative.

Continuing the Outdoor Learning Spaces Thread

First, I held a design symposium for outdoor learning spaces, written about here. We explored with faculty different possibilities for outdoor learning and gave them spaces to pose important questions, voice their perspectives, and explore pathways for using outdoor space for teaching and learning.

Next, I worked with a colleague to explore where we could develop outdoor learning spaces for our Indianapolis campus. After a presentation on outdoor learning spaces, Nathan Bryer, Executive Director of Operations, Division of Undergraduate Studies at IUPUI, approached me and wanted to talk about outdoor spaces at IUPUI. Working with Nathan, we spent an afternoon exploring different spaces on the IUPUI campus.

Image Five: First page of the Outdoor Learning Spaces Report

On our campus walk, we discovered four areas that could, with limited additions, readily support student learning and public engagement. To share our ideas, we created a proposal highlighting the four outdoor locations at IUPUI. The locations are all situated in the central corridor of campus. Our goal with this proposal was to generate conversation among campus stakeholders about the possibilities that small but transformational additions to these spaces could bring to their IUPUI campus community.

Outdoor learning spaces hold a lot of possibilities for benefiting campus environments. There is so much untapped potential. So, as the weather warms, consider walking around campus with your colleagues and discuss how YOU see things anew.

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2023 Mosaic Initiative Webinar Series

Posted on March 28, 2023 by Tracey Birdwell

Each year, the Mosaic Initiative at Indiana University invites speakers to talk about topics related to active learning classrooms, often on research and classroom design. This spring, the Mosaic Initiative hosted three webinars highlighting new approaches to researching classroom behavior, new trends in classroom design and faculty support, and faculty’s perspectives on teaching in active learning classrooms.

Our guest speakers for the 2023 webinar series represented higher ed institutions from across the globe.

In today’s blog, I want to share all three webinar recordings with you.

Webinar One

In this first session, Dr. Melinda T. Owens (Assistant Teaching Professor, University of California, San Diego) described the development and application of the machine-learning-derived algorithm Decibel Analysis for Research in Teaching (DART), which can analyze thousands of hours of STEM course audio recordings quickly, with minimal costs, and without need for human observers. Then, Tripp Harris (PhD Student, Indiana University – Bloomington) shared the Mosaic Initiative’s ongoing research into students’ and instructors’ use of learning spaces on Indiana University (IU) campuses, demonstrated our simultaneous use of a ceiling heat map camera, small positioning tags, and audio sensing technology for studying how students and instructors use physical space during formal class meetings.

Here’s the link for their talks, “What’s in the Noise? Classifying Teaching Practices with DART (Decibel Analysis for Research in Teaching),” and “Multidimensional Approaches for Exploring Use of Classroom Space:” https://iu.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/t/1_8ek18ply

Webinar Two

In our second webinar, Dr. Aiman Khamitova (Innovative Learning Officer, Nazarbayev University) shared the case about the lecture hall transformation into an active learning classroom at Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan. The session focused on two major parts of the case: a classroom redesign followed by faculty training. It also discussed how one classroom transformation led to campus-wide conversations around learning spaces design and usage.

Here’s the link for their talk, “Transformation of a Classroom: Nazarbayev’s University’s Story:” https://iu.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/t/1_b6gbzbny

Webinar Three

In our final session, I led a panel of faculty members (Dr. Kalani Craig (IU-Bloomington), Dr. Kevin Jones (IUPUC), Dr. Brian Krohn, (IUPUI), Dr. Miranda Rodak (IU-Bloomington), to discuss how we support faculty teaching in active learning classrooms. The panel addressed questions like: What kind of classrooms do they wish universities designed? What are their Hybrid teaching needs?

Here’s the link for the panel discussion: https://iu.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/t/1_s5kh89q9

Watch out Twitter for announcements of future webinars: @MosaicIU

2022 Mosaic Initiative Webinar Series for Inclusive Learning Spaces

Posted on March 18, 2022 by Tracey Birdwell

Each year, the Mosaic Initiative at Indiana University invites speakers to talk about topics related to active learning classrooms, often on research and classroom design. Last month, the Mosaic Initiative hosted three webinars highlighting new approaches to inclusive and flexible classroom designs. Our guest speakers for the 2022 webinar series represented higher ed institutions from across the United States.

In today’s blog, I want to share all three webinar recordings with you.

Webinar One

In the first session, which was recorded on February 3, 2022, Richard Holeton, Assistant Vice Provost for Learning Environments, Emeritus, at Stanford University and Crystal Ramsay, Director (interim), Teaching and Learning with Technology, at Penn State University discussed the recent creation of a section dedicated to inclusion (including physical, cultural, and cognitive) in Version 3 of the Learning Space Rating System (LSRS).

Here’s the link for their talk, “Best Practices for Designing Inclusive Learning Spaces”: https://iu.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/1_362chhcp

Webinar Two

In our second session, which was recorded on February 11, 2022, Shannon Dowling, 2020-21 SCUP Fellow and Associate Principal of Learning Environments Strategy + Design at Ayers Saint Gross shared her research on more than two dozen institutions on the topic of welcoming and inclusive physical campus environments.

Here’s the link for Shannon’s talk, “Planning + Designing for Diverse, Equitable, and Inclusive Campus Learning Environments”: https://iu.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/t/1_o3y95qj1

Webinar Three

In our final session, which was recorded on February 15, 2022, Jess Staggs, a research assistant in the ND Learning Research Lab at the University of Notre Dame and G. Alex Ambrose, Director of Learning Research at the Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence (both at the University of Notre Dame) spoke about how changes made in response to the COVID-19 pandemic affected the Learning Space Rating System (LSRS) scores of various classrooms at Notre Dame and how this information might inform the design of future learning spaces.

Here’s the link for their talk, “Building, Evaluating & Understanding the Flexible Classroom pre and post COVID”: https://iu.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/t/1_cp42obui

We hope you enjoy the webinars. If you want more, please explore previous webinars here: https://mosaic.iu.edu/research/research-webinar.html

Watch out Twitter for announcements of future webinars: @MosaicIU

From Educational Technology to Learning Spaces: A Researcher’s Academic Journey

Posted on January 3, 2022 by Tracey Birdwell

Today we welcome to the Mosaic Blog our Mosaic Initiative Post-Doc Researcher, Merve Basdogan. Merve recently defended her PhD in Instructional Systems Technology at Indiana University. In this first blog of the new year, Merve shares her personal academic journey to becoming an Educational Technologist who researches the importance of space design.

An Academic Origin Story

“I was born in Turkey and grew up with five sisters who made my first social network. As a child, I remember watching the cartoon “Inspector Gadget” with my elder siblings and being fascinated how the character can turn his body into almost anything. This cyborg man (i.e., I did not know this term back then) can extend his arms and legs in any direction, transform his body into any shape, fly and move at unusual speeds, and turn his hands and feet into limitless tools. I think since an early age, I have always enjoyed thinking and dreaming about technology, its boundaries, and how it can transform daily lives.

I received my bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Computer Education and Instructional Technology (CEIT) Education at Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara, Turkey. In choosing this program, I had mixed thoughts about what exactly an educational technologist or instructional designer does since the graduates of the programs work in very different professions. In my second year at college, I attended a poster design competition organized and run by the CEIT students in Turkey annually. The theme was “What is being an educational technologist?” Today, I searched for that poster nearly three hours in my archived local folders, e-mail history, and old USB sticks from 2009. And I found it! It was so funny to see that I described an educational technologist as Inspector Gadget who can design and use multiple pedagogies, evaluate a variety of curriculums, and develop multimedia materials. In other words, I imagined an educational designer as someone who solves mysterious educational problems (such as student engagement) with diverse techniques and fit to any context.

Since 2009, I have been asking the same questions and my answers have been changing based on my experiences in the field. To bring a scientific interpretation to this this question, my colleagues and I carried out a job posting analysis and tried to understand who an educational technologist is by comparing four other job titles. The study was published in the Journal of Qualitative Report in 2020.

Figure 1. Image of two students in front of the first-place winner poster designed in response to the question of “What is being an educational technologist” in 2009 in collaboration with my classmate Haluk Alp Celik. — *Figure 1. The first-place winner poster designed in response to the question of “What is being an educational technologist” in 2009 in collaboration with my classmate Haluk Alp Celik.*

Becoming a Learning Space Design Researcher

In addition to my “educational technologist” self, I also define myself as a learning space design researcher. For me, being a researcher is a kind of freedom space in which you can decide the topic you want to explore, the method that you want to use, and the scholars who you want to read their works and collaborate with. The travels to conferences in various lovely cities are also the cherry on the cake that allow you to meet with new people and expand your research skills and network.

After moving from Turkey to the USA for my doctoral education, I better understood the significance of mobility in academia. Stepping outside of my comfort zone and attempting to adopt to countless differences are some of the unique opportunities that contributed to my researcher identity. This physical and social mobility contributed significantly to my researcher identity development process through continuous knowledge reconstruction and self-reflection.

Mosaic Initiative Post Doc

Currently, I am a postdoctoral research associate at Indiana University in the Mosaic Initiative. In this position, I collaborate with Dr. Tracey Birdwell to better understand teaching and learning within innovative learning spaces. Indiana University’s seven campuses and buildings are our researchers’ landscape where we create and develop different classroom designs, collect data, and try to discover the best learning environments that provide effective and equitable learning opportunities for all people.

This post-doc position has been an extremely fascinating opportunity for me to contemplate on the notion of “learning space.“ For example, I realized that space is not only a container in which we live but also an alive entity. It has cultural, social, political, psychological, and historical aspects. In other words, the learning space “serves as a tool of thought and of action” (Lefebvre, 1991). When I enter a classroom, I can identify not only the institutional and disciplinary culture but also the represented pedagogical values. The technological resources, the location and types of the furniture, the orientation of the tables and chairs, the size of the windows, light, heat, acoustics, and so on… They will all tell you something if you wear your researcher eyeglasses.

Working with Mosaic Faculty Fellows is also another pleasant part of my postdoctoral job in the Mosaic Initiative. Helping faculty how to utilize both physical and digital spaces for diverse curricular purposes has been a good two-way thinking practice for me. I can observe faculty’s knowledge reconstruction and reflection processes as well as get their perspectives related to designing learning spaces for an unknown future. For example, over the past summer, The Mosaic Initiative held a Design Symposium on the design of future outdoor classrooms. The prototype outdoor classrooms drawn by faculty showed that their needs, expectations, and concerns are diverse for the future higher education students with changing identities and learning preferences.

Learning Space Researcher

In one of the recent studies, Dr. Birdwell and I investigated spatial understandings of Mosaic Faculty Fellows by analyzing their reflective portfolios written between 2018-2020. Our motivation was to explore how “space” is consciously or unconsciously experienced by faculty in active learning classrooms. It was interesting to find out that four different space forms, including: (1) perceived space, (2) conceived space. (3) lived space, and (4) cultivated space, emerged from faculty narratives. With this study, we hoped to bring a philosophical debate to the active learning classroom design literature. It is currently under review, and we believe that the novel concept of cultivated space might have important implications for faculty development programs on innovative learning spaces in higher education.

Conclusion

To sum up, like all other built environments, classrooms preserve values and meanings about the educational thought and practice. As a learning space researcher, I believe that learning space development requires a nomadic mind. Re-engagement with my understandings and assumptions of curriculum, knowledge, and pedagogy results in innovative learning and space design. The most challenging and satisfying moments in my work lie in these deconstruction and historical reflection activities.”

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Active Learning Classrooms and the K-12 Environment

Posted on August 2, 2021 by Tracey Birdwell

Today we welcome to the Mosaic Blog our Mosaic Research Intern, Tripp Harris. Tripp is currently a Learning Sciences PhD student at Indiana University. Typically, the Mosaic blog discusses issues related to classroom space and active learning in higher ed settings. This month, Tripp writes about the growing conversation around space in K-12 settings.

“Over the past decade, there has been a growing movement in favor of designing more flexible classroom spaces in K-12 schools. Researchers and practitioners alike are calling for greater attention and resources towards designing classroom spaces that facilitate collaboration and active learning. At the heart of this turn is a shift in how we understand the physical classroom—not as fixed or static but dynamic and socially constructed among teachers and students.

Some say this has come about in part to support a growing embrace of constructivist instructional approaches in which teachers and students take part in the co-creation of knowledge. This shift away from teacher-centered classrooms is also taking place in part to prepare students to participate in today’s labor market. The demands of our evolving global economy call for learning spaces that model 21^st century workplace environments— classroom environments with flexible furniture, collaborative space, and accessible digital technology aim to facilitate creativity and help students hone 21^st century skills.

Offering a range of seating options allows for classroom flexibility and gives students the ability to learn in a space that they find physically comfortable. Image: Demcointeriors.com

Among developing modernization of physical classroom space, flexible classroom furniture appears to be the biggest trend. Using classroom furniture that is moveable makes it easier to configure collaborative learning spaces for a range of instructional purposes; flexible seating and meeting space allows for easy transitions between small and large group discussion, independent work and class presentations, and as-needed access to digital technology. And allowing students to reconfigure furniture themselves to meet their own personal needs empowers them to form a sense of authority in the classroom. Some teachers are even including students in their classroom redesign efforts and conversations.

Learning space with movable furniture allows students and teachers to configure the classroom in ways that are conducive to collaboration and active learning. Image: Scholarfurniture.co.nz

Evolving trends in digital classroom technology are also pushing a reconceptualization of learning space in K-12 classrooms. Just as flexible furniture arrangement has helped move the teacher away from the front and center of the classroom, digital technology is also being used to promote student authority and personalization in learning spaces. Mediating collaboration in space through the use of flexible furniture and enhanced digital technology helps center interaction among students and positions teachers as facilitators of group meaning-making rather than directors of instruction.

Digital technology complements flexible furniture to facilitate collaboration and a variety of instructional goals. Image: Paragon

Teachers and schools across the world are sharing ideas and resources for designing flexible, innovative classrooms. An entire industry exists online for purchasing flexible classroom equipment, with an abundance of commercial sites devoted specifically to supplying furniture for student-centered classrooms. There is little doubt that the emergence of this industry is a positive sign for the future of classroom design.

The cost of such classroom features, though, could be cause for concern among teachers and administrators. Despite the well-documented benefits of flexible furniture and innovative learning technology, many schools may find it difficult—if not financially impossible—to justify spending thousands of dollars to revitalize each of their classrooms. Maryanne Emery, a fifth-grade science teacher in California, advocates for checking school building storage for existing furniture not already in use. Acknowledging the high cost of ordering new classroom furniture, she also is a proponent of thrift shopping. This kind of resourcefulness can help teachers create classroom spaces conducive to active learning without breaking the bank.

These relatively recent shifts in K-12 classroom design represent a growing dialogue on the intersections physical space, teaching, and learning. While this dialogue has been quite active among the higher education community, K-12 school systems are more recently starting to jump on board. As the national and international k-12 landscape embraces more contemporary approaches to classroom instruction, we may see wide-scale movement towards more flexible, collaborative classroom design.”

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Our New Mosaic Reflective Portfolio!

Posted on July 1, 2021 by Tracey Birdwell

In today’s blog, we want to share our updated version of a Mosaic reflective portfolio. The reflective portfolio is an artifact that each Mosaic Fellow creates, piece by piece, through their tenure in the Mosaic Fellows Program. In a previous blog, we shared an anonymized example of our first version of the portfolio. Since then, we’ve improved on our original design. In this blog, we highlight the key components of our new Mosaic portfolio.

Check out our anonymized version of our new Mosaic Portfolio here: 2021Anonymized-Mosaic-Portfolio

The Portfolio

At the close of each of our Mosaic Fellows meetings, we ask the Fellows to write reflections to provided written prompts. The written prompts are focused on the shared readings, discussion, and activities Fellows experience during or before each meeting. Once the final Mosaic meeting ends, we gather the Fellows’ responses, organize them into a portfolio, and add highlights from the program, including lists of participants, photos of meetings, a reading list, an opening letter, and other documents.

Intended Audience for the Portfolio

The Fellows themselves: The portfolio serves as a lasting reminder of their experiences in the Mosaic Fellows program. The portfolio allows them to revisit concepts they encountered and their reactions to all aspects of the program. The portfolio also provides Fellows a resource to draw from for the future. When Fellows need to write a Teaching Statement or add to their teaching dossier, they can draw from or build on their own writings created in the portfolio.
Tenure and Promotion (and other) committees: Fellows can add the portfolio to their teaching dossier to provide examples for teaching excellence. The updated, more formal look and make-up of the portfolio is geared toward an audience of administrators.

The Mosaic Fellows reflective portfolio is made of seven distinct parts:

Intro Letter – We open the portfolio with an introduction letter describing the Mosaic Fellows Program. This letter is directed to readers who might not be familiar with the Mosaic Fellows program. The letter also thanks the Fellow by name for participating.
Table of Contents – Next, we have a table of contents with session themes and prompts related to those themes. This table of contents is meant to provide a brief overview of topics and direct readers to appropriate pages.
Prompts and Responses – This part represents the bulk of the Mosaic portfolio. The responses to each prompt contain text and imagery generated by the faculty members.
Images From Our Sessions – We include images from some of our sessions to remind Fellows of the many collaborations with their peers.
Reading List – All readings from the Mosaic program from the year are included in the reading list. Including the reading list in the portfolio provides a ready reference for Fellows’ future research projects.
List of Participants – We end with a list of the participants from the cohort highlighting the many disciplines they represent.
List of Readings – We end with a reading list to remind any audience who reads through the portfolio that the Mosaic Fellows program is rooted in research. The reading list also serves as a reference of key learning spaces literature to support any future Mosaic Fellow-led research efforts.

Image from a Mosaic Portfolio showing part of a faculty member's reflection. It shows an image of one faculty member's dream classroom. — Image from a Mosaic Portfolio showing part of a faculty member’s reflection.

Our portfolios have been a big hit with the faculty:

“The portfolio is an important artifact that nicely demonstrates what I have learned from readings and inspirations I’ve got from discussion with peer fellows. The carefully designed prompts guide me to better understand key issues such as space and learning, active learning, and collaborative technologies. And the final product of the portfolio itself is a beautiful artifact of this rewarding and transformative experience.” — Yingling Bao, senior lecturer, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

Please Share Your Ideas

As we continue to evolve our approach to creating a reflective portfolio with faculty, we’d love to hear your ideas. If you have a portfolio you would like to share? If so, please do so in the comments below.

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Biophilic Classroom Design: A Synthesis of the Literature

Posted on June 17, 2021 by Tracey Birdwell

Today we welcome to the Mosaic Blog our Mosaic Research Assistant, Merve Basdogan. Merve is currently an Instructional Systems Technology PhD candidate at Indiana University. In this first blog of the summer, Merve shares a synthesis of the literature of the growing trend of biophilia in classrooms.

Biophiplia

Image of Merve Basdogan.

“The Greek word biophilia etymologically comes from the words “bios,” meaning life or living, and “philia,” love or fondness (Oxford Online English Dictionary, 2021). As introduced by the biologist Edward O. Wilson (1984), biophilia focuses on the critical bond between human’s wellbeing and exposure to nature. Biophilic design, on the other hand, is a philosophical design approach that promotes using natural elements in the built environment to evoke positive moods and decrease stress and mental fatigue (Kellert, 2005).

This Mosaic blog post focuses on the current body of the knowledge on biophilic classroom design. I synthesized two recent literature review studies’ findings on biophilic campus design and its impact on university students’ wellbeing.

Literature Review

First, Peters and D’Penna (2020) carried out a critical literature review of 32 empirical papers about the influence of built environment on university students’ physical health, psychological wellbeing, social relationships, and environmental comfort. The authors argued that university students experience certain types of stressors that might cause depression, social isolation, suicide, and mental fatigue. Based on the current literature, they suggested that biophilic design patterns presented in Table 1 might be used to tackle with these psychological and physical problems. For example, visual biophilic applications including landscape views or green views through windows, murals, posters and depicting nature, indoor plants, and the color green were identified as the visual biophilic evidence to cope with campus stressors for students. Similarly, it was noted that study areas with water features, nature-connected views, natural materials such as ornamental stones and wood, and natural light were effective places that students preferred.

Peters and D’Penna (2020, p. 7) added that “research about biophilic architecture is rarely studied through people engaging with actual experiences and is mostly examined through images of options for biophilic spaces. This is not ideal because biophilic design concerns far more than visual qualities and is multi-sensory and context-specific.” Based on this suggestion, outdoor classrooms might be ideal research settings for understanding students’ multisensory experiences with light, air, sound, water, color, and special configuration as well as cultural and ecological attachment to these built educational environments.

Table 1. Biophilic design patterns by Peters and D’Penna (2020)

Image of Biophilic design patterns by Peters and D’Penna (2020)

Image of the three core premises of the innovative-conductive university campus.

In the second review study, Abdelaal, (2019) argued that an innovative-conductive university campus should have three core premises including (1) innovation, (2) sustainability, and (3) biophilia (see Figure 1). In this model, interaction with nature is considered as a fundamental element that improves individuals’ attention, mental fatigue, academic performance, cognitive performance, concentration, and memory.

Beside empirical studies, Abdelaal, (2019) also points out the theoretical studies that discuss the restorative effects of nature on humans such as stress reduction, increased self-esteem and mood, reduced anxiety, and reduced headaches.

Finally, nine values of biophilic design borrowed from Kellert (2005) and their impacts on students were discussed in Table 2 by Abdelaal (2019, p. 1452). The naturalistic, scientific, symbolic, and aesthetic values were recommended as empowering factors that might enhance campus students’ wellbeing.

Image of the nine values of biophilic design.

Faculty and Student Perspectives on Biophilia

As indicated by the strong body of literature, identifying various biophilic design patterns on university campuses from the eyes of faculty and students might provide important psychological, physical, social, and environmental comfort and well-being for both learners and instructors.”

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Tripp Harris for his assistance in editing and proofreading this study.

References

Peters, T., & D’Penna, K. (2020). Biophilic design for restorative university learning environments: A critical review of literature and design Recommendations. Sustainability, 12(17), 7064.
Kellert, S., 2005. Building for life: Designing and understanding the human-nature connection. Island Press, Washington, DC.
Wilson, E.O., 1984. Biophilia. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Abdelaal, M. S. (2019). Biophilic campus: An emerging planning approach for a sustainable innovation-conducive.

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The Mosaic Report

Posted on May 2, 2021 by Tracey Birdwell

Last October, the Mosaic Initiative’s marked its five-year anniversary. To celebrate a productive five years, we put together the The Mosaic Report_2021, which highlights the impacts of the Mosaic Initiative across Indiana University since its start. In today’s blog, I want to share the report, highlight a few key outcomes of the past few years, and invite colleagues from other Institutions to share their own reports in the comments below.

The Report

The Mosaic Report is a 24-page document that highlights our work with faculty support, our research on active learning classrooms, and our contributions to classroom design at Indiana University.

Faculty Support

Since, 2015, the Mosaic Initiative has supported hundreds of instructors who teach in Indiana University’s many learning environments, including, but not limited to Mosaic classrooms. For the report, we highlighted our varied approach to support. We also focused on our Mosaic Fellows program, including several quotes from the Mosaic Fellows who shared their first-hand experiences and perspectives about the Mosaic Initiative.

Image of a Mosaic Fellow and their quote about participating in the Mosaic Fellows program. . — Image of a Mosaic Fellow and their quote about participating in the Mosaic Fellows program.

Research

In the last 5 years, the Mosaic Initiative has generated staff and faculty-led research on our learning spaces that is widely recognized across Higher Ed. In our research section, we highlighted key publications and presentations.

Image of selected publications from Mosaic staff and Mosaic Fellows.

These research studies used a variety of approaches to better understand active learning in different contexts such as descriptive approach (i.e., surveys, interviews, classroom recordings, self-reflections, and content analysis) and intervention approach (i.e., action research).

Informing Design

The Mosaic Initiative has helped inform the design of the wide variety of learning spaces across Indiana University. In the Report, we feature our approaches to gaining feedback from faculty and the impact our efforts have had on our spaces. For example, the Annual Mosaic Design Symposia are highlighted in the report as a part of improved classroom dialogue at our institution.

Conclusion

The Mosaic Report is intended to offer a broad picture showing past and present practices of the Mosaic Initiative on three main themes (1) research on active learning, (2) improved classroom design, and (3) faculty support. The Report also provided a self-evaluation opportunity for us to review Initiative goals, performance outcomes, and institutional impact. We believe that the themes addressed in the Report might serve as an example for how to convey successes with active learning classrooms. How about you? Are you working on your own report for ALC’s? How do you plan to represent your own institutional impacts? If you have a report of your own to share, please add it as a link below!

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