Trish Andrews and Derek Powell
University of Queensland
The Collaborative Teaching and Learning Centre at the University of Queensland, consists of a suite of six innovative teaching and learning spaces that were opened in May 2006 at the St Lucia campus to support collaborative approaches to teaching and learning. These spaces were built as an initiative by the former Deputy Vice Chancellor, Teaching and Learning, who considered that the existing teaching and learning space facilities at UQ did not adequately support collaborative pedagogies. The CTLC spaces were designed to foster collaborative approaches to teaching and learning, both internally in the small and large collaborative teaching and learning spaces and externally through the videoconferencing and access grid rooms. Critically, the design of these spaces was seen as offering teaching and learning opportunities not provided by ‘traditional’ teaching and learning spaces. The opening of this unique space sparked national and international interest. Another new space was opened at the Gatton campus at the beginning of 2007, the Regional Collaborative Teaching and Learning Centre. It was intended that both the St Lucia and Gatton spaces would support timetabled teaching activities as well as independent study for students. Using the spaces for both teaching and learning activities created particular challenges in managing the space to optimise access for both staff and students.
The development of these spaces represented a considerable investment by the University of Queensland. There is a need to understand how successful these spaces are in achieving the anticipated outcomes particularly those related to fostering collaborative teaching and learning activities for both staff and students. Consequently an extensive evaluation of the centres has been conducted since 2006 and is continuing at the present time. In evaluating the centres we are attempting to better understand the relationship between pedagogy, space and technology. This evaluation has investigated a number of factors including staff and student usage, the reasons students use the centre, the technology they find most useful, the design aspects of the space and the ways this impacts on learning, the ways in which staff use the centre and the impact of staff development activities.
This case study reports on two years of data collected at the St Lucia CTLC and1 year of data collected from the RCTLC at Gatton and comments from some of the lessons learnt from the ongoing development of innovative teaching and learning spaces.