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Learning Hubs and Media Centers

One of the many concerns over the effects of the pandemic on learning over these past two years has been the loss of opportunities for students to collaborate in person, important for both learning and the development of social skills. One of the ways these vital needs are being addressed is through the use of learning hubs and media centers, spaces that foster a combination of socialization and education. Let’s take a look at both.

Learning hubs, also called learning commons, are spaces for students to use either between classes or after school. In some cases these are off-site areas sponsored by local communities, but many are within school walls. Designed to be more inviting than simply hanging out in hallways or lobbies, learning hubs are flexible and adaptable to a variety of needs.

Hive Collaboration Area

There are no hard and fast rules for learning hub design, but common items typically include soft and inviting furniture, with a layout that can be adapted to individual study or group collaboration. In some ways, learning hubs reflect trends we’ve seen in colleges, and in office design. Many have cafes with coffee or other drinks and light fare, tools like whiteboards to promote group work and private spaces for counseling, tutoring or quiet study. Some may even have outdoor areas.

While some schools have added learning hubs via new construction, many more are repurposing existing space, often unused or underused spaces like lobbies or cafeterias, which might normally be occupied for only a couple of hours per day.

The media center is an extension of the same concept, but with (as the name would suggest) a focus on the technology needed to produce graphic elements for projects and presentations. For that reason, media centers (also called library commons) are typically developed within existing libraries. The media center creates a hybrid space where new technology lives side by side with ready access to books and other more traditional sources of research.

As with learning hubs, look for lounge-style furniture designed for comfort, collaboration and flexibility, as well as the preservation of the private study spaces you’ll find in a traditional library. Check out some of our collaborative spaces at Wheaton High School here.

Libraries in the Mall?

If there’s one overall trend in education over the past decade, it’s the blurring of the lines that used to define a learning space. As noted here previously, the traditional desks-facing-front classroom has given way to flexible spaces that better support different types of learning. Some schools are doubling as community centers, further integrating the classroom with its surroundings. And now, the next time you go to the mall you just might find a library there.

It’s no secret that indoor malls have struggled with vacancy rates as internet shopping and avenue-style retail venues have risen in popularity. Now at least 20 of them nationwide have introduced library branches, including one in Annapolis, MD, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

The experiment seems to be successful in both directions, attracting both shoppers who might not otherwise go to a library, and library patrons who otherwise might not visit the mall. That means more foot traffic for other mall tenants, for one thing.

The effort seems to resonate especially with immigrant populations, who might not otherwise be familiar with library systems and procedures. Many of the mall branches take great pains to provide multi-lingual offerings.

Typically, these mall branches differ from a traditional library branch in a few significant ways: they tend to be smaller due to space constraints. The focus is much more on activities and programs like group readings and story time for kids. That means you’ll typically find far fewer books than in a regular branch. In other words, more educational space and less shelving.

Patrons don’t seem to mind, though, as the branches provide plenty of educational activities for kids and other non-shoppers to enjoy instead of killing time on a bench. At the Annapolis location, users can even borrow laptop computers.

Things have gone so well in Annapolis that the county is planning and budgeting to make the location permanent, and to quadruple its size.

Want to know more about educational spaces? Contact the experts at Douron.

Moving Target: Technology in the Classroom

One of the great challenges in modern learning space design is accommodating the shifts in technology that have come to the classroom. The pace of change is so rapid that we really have to plan for the unknown.

Perhaps the biggest question in deploying technology in the classroom is not the “what” but the “how.” Often, new devices are employed to support the same teaching methods from decades past. In a book we’ve referenced in previous posts, From the Campfire to the Holodeck: Creating Engaging and Powerful 21st Century Learning Environments, author David Thornburg notes that interactive whiteboards have become all the rage of late. These are wonderful and versatile tools, but when they’re used just as blackboards were – to support a teacher standing in front of a class and lecturing (the ‘campfire’) – the potential of all that new technology is diluted at best.

Thornburg also notes that many schools continue to ban classroom smartphone use by students for fear that the devices will be used to Google test answers or otherwise take shortcuts. The solution is to craft tests with answers that require independent thought and can’t be answered by an internet search, but in fairness that approach creates a much bigger demand on an educator’s already limited time, both in the creation and the grading of open-ended challenges. It’s much quicker to review multiple-choice answers than to assess the effort in independent research.

So when we don’t know what new technology the coming years will bring, and when different schools use the same technology in very different ways, where does that leave classroom design? What are the design elements that allow us to plan for the unknown?

In a word, flexibility. The same approach that allows a classroom to support different models of learning – and to quickly adapt from one to another – also supports ever-changing technology. The ideal modern learning space is a design chameleon, changing quickly to accommodate the teacher at the whiteboard, the students circled up with their smartphones to research a new assignment as a group … and whatever comes next year, and the year after that.

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