Deborah Bickford and David Wright on Creating New Spaces for Learning

With the ELI 2007 Annual Meeting fast approaching, I interviewed the University of Dayton's Deborah Bickford and David Wright on the ideas behind their upcoming featured session, "Creating New Spaces for Learning in Community." They will conduct their session on Tuesday, January 23, from 10:00-11:00 AM, along with fellow presenter Bill Dittoe of Educational Facilities Consultants.

My discussion with Bickford and Wright focused on the factors that motivated the University of Dayton to focus on learning spaces as a key component of its academic planning and development. They also reviewed the challenges the university encountered in effectively engaging the institutional community in learning space design, as well as the approaches the university took to overcome them. Finally, Bickford and Wright talked about options institutions might consider in assessing the impact of learning spaces on learning.