The Learning Matters Podcast captures insights into, experiences of, and conversations around education at the University of Sussex. This podcast episode is hosted by Simon Overton and Dr Heather Taylor. It is recorded monthly, and each month is centred around a particular theme. The theme of our fourteenth episode is ‘signage and higher education’ and we hear from Dr Emily Danvers, Senior Lecturer in Education, and Sarah Lawrence, Architect and Subject Leader for BA in Interior Design at West Dean.

Recording

Listen to the recording of Episode 14 on Spotify

Simon Overton: Welcome to the Learning Matters podcast from the University of Sussex, where we capture insights, experiences, and conversations around education at our institution and beyond. Our theme for this episode is Signage in Higher Education, and our guests are Dr Emily Danvers, senior lecturer in Education, and Sarah Lawrence, architect and subject leader for BA in Interior Design KLC at West Dean. Our names are Simon Overton and Heather Taylor, and we are your presenters today. Welcome, everyone.

Emily Danvers & Sarah Lawrence: Hi.

Heather Taylor: Emily, how does the contemporary design of higher education spaces make a difference to teaching and learning and vice versa?

Emily Danvers: I suppose we notice it very much when we are teaching and also when we’ve had those experiences of being in a classroom or a lab or a seminar room or a library, all of these spaces make particular kind of things possible. So we know obviously in lecture it’s very hard—it’s much harder to do things that involve movement. And we know in a seminar it can be hard to kind of, hold the attention in the same way in the space. So the placement of furniture, the type of room, the signs in the room, all of these create and necessitate different kind of pedagogies. The space is really important, I think, and I think, Doreen Massey talks about spaces as not just being slices through time, but they’re really multiple and relational.

They’re not just neutral backdrops for learning. Something that just sits then is ordinary and we just take place. It’s just the scene. It’s more than that actually. I think they do something to learning and teaching and to the bodies and the practices in those kind of places. So I think there’s something active about them that it’s worth thinking about.

And it’s sometimes talked about also as a practice. So it’s like always in the process of being made that relationship between the space and what it makes possible. So learning is something we do, like we stage something, we perform rather than it’s something we have. So it’s not just the furniture. It’s not just the lighting, it’s not just a building, it does something.

And I think most often we might notice that I think when spaces feel different to other people. So some of us feel at home in the university classroom and some of us do not. Some of us feel at home in different kinds of universities because they feel similar to other places we’ve been in. So there’s all these subjective relationships to space that is really important and to think about. And also I think some of us feel that we have a control within a space. Some teachers feel that they can move this furniture around or to be playful or disruptive, and others particularly when they’re new or feel less confident, maybe feel they don’t want. So I suppose long wordy answer, but I think spaces do make a difference, and they have some sort of something active, in what they make possible.

Heather Taylor: Great. Sarah, same question over to you.

Sarah Lawrence: Yeah. I mean, I think, historically education spaces have been kind of rooted in tradition, so often favouring kind of didactic forward facing kind of lecture style teaching. However, obviously, as curriculum and pedagogy has evolved, the learning environments that we design and we work within have to change as well. And as Emily said, educational spaces are dynamic, and they have to actively respond to the needs and behaviours of those within them. And as an architect and designer, for me, every project begins with a context. So in educational environments, that context is really shaped by the educators and learners who inhabit them.

So contemporary education spaces really present an opportunity for us as designers to translate those pedagogical values into spatial experiences and physical designs. But it really allows us also to reflect on the flexibility and adaptability inherent in modern curriculum design and pedagogy. And in 2016, RIBA, the Royal Institute for British Architects, published The Better Spaces report about education spaces, and it was really highlighting the impact that school design has on educational outcomes. And over 90% of the teachers surveyed believe that well designed schools positively impact on both student behaviour and academic performance as well.

And this follows through into higher education as well. And we can see over recent years that British academic performance has continued to rise. And this is a combination of different things, strategic reforms that happened, with things like the Building Schools for the Future programme in the early 2000s. And while those things aren’t necessarily immediately visible, the long term impact of those kind of strategies becomes clear, in the educational outcomes that we’re seeing now. So that really kind of underlines the importance of the planning of education spaces in really shaping the future of learning. And in all design spaces, in all spaces that are designed, there are certain spatial qualities that really work to enhance the user experience. Things like acoustics, access to natural light, circulation, spatial flow.

But one of the most critical things in education design is that collaboration with educators and learners and that link to pedagogy and curriculum design. But, really, the goal of when we’re designing learning environments is creating environments that empower students and educators to take ownership of their own learning, and also to provide educators with that freedom to teach in diverse and responsive ways. Hope that’s okay.

Simon Overton (06.02): Everything that both of you said rings so true to me and everything that I’ve done. And when I’ve been doing some teacher training, I like to say to the teachers, don’t let the cleaners decide what your classroom looks like. The first thing that you should do when you go in, is to rearrange the furniture and get it how you like it and how it’s best going to support you. But moving on from that, Sarah, I wanted to ask, how does your professional background as an architect and interior designer influence your understanding of space and pedagogy?

Sarah Lawrence: So one of the things that I mentioned previously was about context, and that’s important in every design project that I’ve worked on. And it really means analysing the client, stakeholders, groups of people, along with all of the other factors like site, location, if there’s an existing building, things like that, that will impact on a project. And, obviously, no one project is ever the same. There’s always a different context for every single project. And for every project, whether it’s a commercial project, an education project, or a residential project, it’s going to begin with the architect or the designer outlining and developing a brief. And that means listening to the requirements of a client or a group of people, in terms of education spaces and really setting out these requirements as parameters for the project.

And that’s called, like, the briefing, the early feasibility stage. And then as I said, with that education project, there’s that other layer that’s added onto that, which is the importance of pedagogy and curriculum design, and the changing nature of both aspects. Those things are never going to stay the same, and we can’t design spaces for now. It has to be for the future as well. So key at the very early stages of a project and throughout the project as well is those workshops with educators, teachers, lecturers, students to really understand how the space is intended to be used and but allowing flexibility for different uses within those space.

So for me personally, I’ve worked on designing education projects, but I also teach. So I teach on the online BA, and I lead the online BA course, in Interior Design at KLC West Dean. And I’ve also recently undertaken the PG Cert with Emily. Emily is a course leader. So that provided a really unique opportunity for me personally to reflect on the relationship between pedagogy and space from a different perspective, almost the other side, whereas I’m looking at it from a different perspective. Obviously, when I’m working on it, from a design point of view. And then also alongside that, I also teach and have studied creative subjects.

Within the creative subjects, there’s a real importance of project-based active learning, and work with real world scenarios and also industry partners as well. And this project-based type of learning is being introduced more and more into higher education to create those links with the changing nature of the workplace. Those kind of project based types of learning and the way that that’s taught start to replicate the kinds of skills that students will need when they move into the ever changing and ever evolving workplace. So, really, when we’re designing education spaces and approaching it from the kind of architect designer point of view, we’re not, as I said, we’re not designing just for the here and now, we’re designing for the future as well.

Simon Overton: So I worked in a school in Hong Kong, is where I did a lot of my teaching. And it was an old school, but they redesigned the interior of it. Right? And they had this vision for the hall, which was all these blocks. They’re about a metre cube, square blocks made from, I don’t know, like, chipboard or something, with quite sharp edges. And some of them were open and some of them weren’t. And the idea was that the children would sort of sit here and there, and in the open blocks, there would be books and the children would sit and read.

The children didn’t do that. They ran and jumped over the blocks. Of course, they did because they were children. So then they had to ban all the children from going on the blocks. And then they spent a really, really long time putting little foam edges on each of them. And there were a 120 of these blocks, and they had to put a little foam thing on the edge of each one and had to have special rules to stop the children running all over them. And I thought a teacher would have looked at that design and said, no, that’s never going to work.

Sarah Lawrence (10.22): Yeah. And I think in terms of design, I think often as well, in terms of design projects and I’ve worked on some project, and that made me think of some of the projects I’ve worked in terms of, like, the camp BSF, like Building Schools for the Future Programme. And often, when we’re creating that new kind of spaces, we’ll do things like prototypes. So we’ll create spaces, and then teachers and students and children and people who are going to use the space will have an opportunity to go and really test out the space before it becomes something kind of that actually happens. Because those kinds of experiences, that’s when it’s so important, I think, that education spaces have that opportunity to adapt and be flexible because things change. And until people inhabit space, you can never pre-empt what’s going to happen. But that’s why workshops and having that understanding with people who are going to live and work in the space is so important.

Emily Danvers: I wonder how much that does happen in our own institution or elsewhere or whether those workshops and collaborations are much more high level. I’ve no idea. I often think of libraries as being a really good example of that because libraries are often redesigned all the time because I think they note that – they’ve come to be places which are so heavily used that they have to respond very quickly to different kinds of learners and students. And so from group study zones to, like, private booths so people can do online calls and wellbeing zones even in libraries. So I always think of libraries, and I’ve definitely seen adverts for, like, stakeholder groups and all of that stuff being very responsive to the user experience if you like. But I don’t know how much we do that in our general teaching space. I’ve no idea. But I think that’d be interesting to think of if we don’t already do it, that how much could we consult each other. Because it’s often we’re not designing new buildings, but we’re working with existing spaces in different ways.  Consultation is really important.

Heather Taylor: Emily, what could educators learn from designers and vice versa about designing and using spaces?

Emily Danvers: Okay. Well, I know nothing about design. The only thing I know is from watching Interior Design Masters, which obviously bits of it are filmed at Sussex. So that’s always quite exciting when I see the entrance to ACCA. But, no, I don’t know anything about design. But, obviously, having spoken to Sarah and reflecting on that in a recent project around learning spaces, I think I suppose that idea not just thinking about the context, but the brief, the thing you said, Sarah, about acoustics and I suppose I understand when I go into a well well-designed retail or hospitality space, that kind of thing, I sort of know where to sit or how to feel, sense the energy.  And I just think that there are probably all sorts of design tricks that I know nothing about, but somehow I feel the effects of. And I think we don’t have that in the same way in our buildings. And I guess lots of them are traditional as you said. But in our newer campus buildings, maybe we do more. But in our older buildings, I don’t think they are instinctive to get around and be in. There’s not a lot of signage. If there is signage, it’s out of date. They’re not particularly accessible. So one of the projects which I’ll talk about later, I went to every teaching room on campus, and I got lost so many times, and I’m an able-bodied neurotypical person. Right? And it took—I had to do it over several days, weeks, because I just found it really confusing. I had to stop. I had to check the map. There was nothing in my body that told me where to go or how to feel. It was really cognitive. I had to check the map, check the room, go back. So there’s something about that sort of working with the energy of a space and thinking about all of those wider context like, don’t know, like you said about acoustics and light that we don’t, where I’m not supposed to notice it, but I feel it. And I think that’s really worth paying attention to.

More specifically, one of the projects I did, it’s not like learning spaces, but it’s about students learning at home. And I asked them about how they navigated between their home learning spaces and their campus spaces and their kind of feelings about that process. And they all spoke about being drawn to the space in relation to their feelings and the kind of learning tasks rather than going to particular spaces that they were told to use in a certain way. So they might be seeking space to be quiet or space with that gentle hum, a space there where it could be private and unnoticed or spaces where they could feel like where they’re watched a bit by people, so that’s motivating. Spaces that could leave, spaces that could personalise or spaces with others, you know, spaces you could be cosy. Like, they were thinking about all of those different things about noise, acoustics, you said, people, light, objects. They weren’t thinking “I’m going to go to the group study room because that’s where I’ve been told to go”. And so I think that people really do navigate campuses and buildings with their body, and that’s not something I’d ever really thought about. But there probably is something in there from a designer’s perspective, and Sarah probably knows all that stuff. But I think we need to know more about that and work with it and use it to our best abilities in supporting students. Because we’ve got some beautiful places on campus to sit and be, whether you’re studying or just thinking or actually formal teaching. There’s loads of lovely places you could sit and do some work, and it’s about supporting students to discover how to use those spaces, I think.

Sarah Lawrence (15.44): Yeah. I mean, I think it’s such a great conversation to have, and I think that’s why it’s so important to have that dialogue between designers and educators because you’re the people who’ll be using the space, and it’s really important to understand how that space is going to be used. It’s an interesting point about the retail and hospitality spaces because, actually, it also links in with the way that students view universities now and how they are. They’re an experience. And it’s not just about going to learn. It’s about everything that you have along with that, and with retail and hospitality spaces and other commercial spaces, it is about—you’re creating spaces that people want to go to, and you’re almost selling a space to someone, which in a way is what you’re doing with a university as well. Students are paying to go to that space. And it is easier to do with new campuses because you’re starting afresh. With older campuses, it’s harder because you’re working with a more traditional way of working like I talked about before. It’s a very different style of teaching, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t make changes and things like that. And I think—I mean, we’ll talk about signage and things like that in a bit.

But it’s also about the atmosphere of space. And I think the point about the bodies and the noise and the atmosphere is really interesting. And, actually, in projects, in education projects and workplace projects and other commercial projects as well, we started to find things like typologies. So different types of spaces have different associations with them, and that doesn’t have to be like a name. It doesn’t have to be a like a small group room or a private room. It could be to do with the sound or the feel, and, actually, on education projects and workplace projects, often new names will be given to those types of spaces to avoid the kind of prescriptive traditional connotations that might be associated with those types of spaces. And you’re still trying to create a similar space type, but it’s not so prescriptive in the way that that space is being used. And that really allows people to have a bit more freedom when they’re doing things. But lighting is so important. Access to natural light, things like that, has such a huge impact on the way people teach and learn.

But it’s really about making people want to use those spaces. And that is important in universities where we’re trying to attract people to university to learn. So you have to give something similar to a retail or hospitality environment, where it becomes more of a commodity, where it is a space that people want to go to. But also I think the thing is with good design as well, and that’s where it links into good design of retail and hospitality spaces, it’s that you do intuitively, as a user, understand how to engage with the space’s intended purpose. And you have a familiarity with certain types of spaces as well.

But the functions won’t necessarily be through a label or something like that. It might be through lighting, different types of lighting, different types of flooring, a different type of ceiling. Even just adjusting the ceiling height and creating a lower ceiling height and a bigger ceiling height space creates a more intimate environment. And there’s lots of kind of pods and things like that where you can create those kind of environments, different types of textures, softer finishes to absorb more acoustics. So it’s all of those kind of things that go into spaces.

But that doesn’t necessarily have to be in new campuses, that can be in existing spaces as well. But one of the things I think that’s important as well is because, obviously, we’re talking about flexibility and adaptability, there has to be some underlying, whether it’s signage or just subtle prompts that guide people how to use different types of space. So it’s great designing in, like, an open plan space, but they do have to be, people have to know how to use them. And that can be through signage, but it can also be through showing people how to use different furniture layouts and explaining that to the people who are going to be using the space or having visual cues or icons, things like that, or the lighting. The way that the furniture is laid out can really help to show how a space is intended to be used. But so in design, we’ll use things like adjacency diagrams at the early design stages, which we work with educators and learners to work out the relationship between different types of spaces.

So where you were talking about kind of a route through campus and it being kind of hard to figure out where you need to go and the journey that you need to take, particularly in new campus designs. But also when working with existing buildings as well, we’ll look at the way spaces are used, their relationship to one another, and how you can create either physical relationships or visual relationships between spaces. And things like journey mapping is also important. So understanding, like, a day in the life of an educator or a day in the life of a student and how they’re going to be using the space is so important because it helps us to understand how that space will be used. And particularly in education spaces, there’s so many different people. And like you were saying, there’s neurodiverse people. Everyone has a different experience, and it’s understanding how to allow people to have the experience that they want to have and designing spaces that they can kind of work with, co-create, personalise themselves. But there’s no, like, right way of doing it. It depends on the context, and it’s thinking about, like, each individual space type and then thinking about how those spaces are going to be used and how they link to one another as well.

Simon Overton (21.38): I used to work in Arts C in Sussex, and to get out to get back to the station, typically, people walk through Arts C, Arts B, and Arts A. And there’s double doors, and they’re automated, or you have to press a button to get through. It takes ages to walk through there. And I thought, wow, there really must be a better way. And it turns out there’s some little stairs, but if it was wrong to go down, then there’s no signs on them saying the way they lead, but I thought, oh, I’ll just try. So I went down these stairs at the side of the building, and then it comes to a little, sort of a gravel, like loose stones, like a crunchy like a driveway sort of gravel thing. And then you walk through that, and it’s really quick. It’s super quick, but it feels so wrong to go down there.

Heather Taylor: Yeah. I know where you mean.

Simon Overton: You know the bit?  It feels like the naughty stairs when you’re going down there because it’s not signposted and the terrain is all strange as well, but it’s a way better way to get out of the building.

Heather Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. No. I know what you mean. It’s so weird. It feels like you’re not allowed down there. It doesn’t say you’re not allowed down there.

Emily Danvers: But that’s what I mean, spaces give us all these messages like that. It’s about kind of being tuned in to listen to them and do something with them that’s useful for us as educators and for our students, isn’t it? Like, how do we do something about that? And I recognise, I recognise the realistic situation we’re in. Universities aren’t just going to spend millions on a sign project. Like, they’re just not. But at the same time, there are small things we could be thinking about. And, yeah, it’s important. It’s one of those subtle messages that I think make a difference how people feel. And as you were saying, Sarah, like, people are coming for an experience, and that’s part of it.

Simon Overton: Sarah how might we support students and educators to use spaces more effectively for now, their future careers, and lifelong learning?

Sarah Lawrence (23:26): So I think this kind of relates to the changing curriculum and pedagogy as well. And there’s a really strong link between education design and workplace design, and those two aspects are really intertwined. Obviously, there’s a clear link between the two because graduates will go into the workplace, but the workplace is constantly evolving. And particularly now, in terms of lifelong learning, we’re seeing that careers don’t follow a linear path anymore.

Students won’t necessarily study one subject for one career in their lifetime, and the design of education spaces really has to respond to that as well. And when we’re designing spaces, they have to prepare students, not only with the academic knowledge that they’ll need to go into the workplace, but also the variety of skills that they’ll need to facilitate that kind of nonlinear career path. So things like versatility, empathy, curiosity, agility, adaptability. And, again, that relates back to that need for flexible and adaptable spaces that really allow students and educators to take responsibility for their own learning, to co-create their own learning spaces.

And there’s a school in Denmark, I don’t know if anyone’s aware of Hellerup School, which is a great example of that. And lots of schools reference that example, because it’s really looking at ways for educators and learners to co-create their own spaces. And that’s undergone many changes since it was created in the early 2000s. And it’s been able to respond to those and adapt to the ways that people have worked within the space and students and teachers have worked within that space. And it’s an open plan idea.

Students and teachers are able to take responsibility for the way that they learn. So they could choose to go and get in a little nook and read a book, or they can work in a group. But it’s been developed to accommodate different learning styles, but it’s a really great example of ways that students and teachers can take responsibility for their own learning. And in higher education, incubator spaces are also quite an interesting example of that. There’s one in particular at the University of East London, which is called the knowledge dock. And it’s really intended there to facilitate building relationships between students and entrepreneurs, local start-ups. And these incubator spaces will often follow the changing nature of workplace themselves, with the intention of allowing the students to immerse themselves in a different kind of working environment.

And that one in particular, the University of London, also illustrates how signage and graphics can be utilised, with a kind of smaller budget, but really be utilised to kind of facilitate the type of space that they want to create. And it kind of links to kind of tech start-ups and the style of those kind of spaces to evoke the same kind of atmosphere. But in terms of education and the workplace, the key is really allowing students and encouraging students and educators to understand how those spaces can be utilised and the potential of those spaces. But it’s about preparing students, not only with those academic skills, but the other skills that they need as well. So collaboration, team working, independent work, but creating spaces that allow that. And it links back to the previous question as well. Allowing students to make judgements on what those spaces are and how they want to learn, so not everyone is going to do that in the same way.

Emily Danvers (27.28): Yeah. Thinking about that relationship between work and universities and students and preparing them for their futures, I think the idea of not having a singular career and flexibility is important. But I also think a lot about hybrid working and how we prepare students for that kind of context. I found a stat which I can find the reference for the link for the blog if that’s helpful, but it was saying that more than a quarter of working adults were hybrid working, this year in the most recent survey.  But workers with a degree or equivalent were ten times more likely to hybrid work. So I think most, many of our students will be going into jobs where they’ll be working in these hybrid ways. And yet in universities, they sort of are, but perhaps they’re not conscious or aware of or being made aware of it. And I suppose that’s what I’d like us to do really practically. I’d like us to think about talking to students about how they use space, knowing what works for them, understanding the rhythms and energy of the day. Like, those sorts of study skills, I think, are really, really important. Like, how to use space, how to work with space, how to curate your own space, how to recognise when you need to be in different kinds of spaces for different kinds of tasks I think, and it is a privilege to be able to work across places because lots of students have many poor quality and temporary housing. So, like, they can’t just do that. Not everybody has a home office that they can just redecorate and have a pet and, you know, all of that stuff that we’re supposed to do. But it doesn’t mean people still can’t recognise that actually today they need to be in a café, and this afternoon, they need to be here. And today, it’s really important for this person to have natural light. Whatever it is, I think developing those skills, which are really important to well-being and work with our students will support them into their graduate careers.

And there’s a lot of talk, and I don’t know this research at all about how, newer graduates find it much more challenging in a in a hybrid work from home situation than people that are older and that have had experience of being in the office type work, the lack of structure and all of that stuff. And so I think preparing students through their understanding of space is a really nice practical way we could be doing that, whilst recognising that we it’s not about sort of redecoration. It’s about using space, I think.

Heather Taylor (36:45): It’s not uncommon, is it, for I remember, like, especially during COVID that, students would be trying to learn from their bed. You know? It’d be like a Zoom thing, and they’d be in bed. And it would be you know, because I’ve, worked. I’m not of the – I’m a different generation to them, basically. You know, it would it would be a really weird idea for me to try and work in bed. You know?  So even though I’m in my kitchen, I’m at a table. The worst-case scenario is I’ll be sitting on my sofa. I’d never just sit there in bed. And those things as well means they can’t separate, so they struggle with it because they get distracted easily. But, also, then I think it’s not nice for them, especially if they’re just in one room, that they can’t separate their work from their rest.  And even just a simple thing like, I don’t know, putting your laptop away in a drawer once you are finished with your essay or, you know, or having it even if you can’t do that because that’s your telly, having, like, a different screensaver or something for work versus, just using your computer for leisure. You know? And, yeah, I think, yeah, it’s really important to think, like you were saying about they’ve not all got home offices. You know? But we’re like we’ve not all got home offices.

And I think that, yeah, just even these little micro details, these little adjustments they can make could make their work in and you know, their ability to work remotely and or in a hybrid way in the future a nicer, easier transition. They know how to set themselves up. They know what works for them. You know?

Emily Danvers: I think it’s a really important, like, developing study skill that’s about space.

Sarah Lawrence: (31.29): I think it also links in with there’s, like, a really strong link between education design and workplace design. And the same things are being considered in workplace design as well, in terms of the way that workplaces are used, more people working from home. And, obviously, that was an impact from the pandemic, but it still carries on. And that’s definitely where when working on education spaces, it’s so important to look ahead to what’s happening in the workplace as well and how those spaces are being designed because that will then influence the design of education spaces. Because people have had to adapt in the workplace as well to working from home and the way that offices and workplaces react to that.

And that’s where things like the incubator spaces are great because they start to evoke that atmosphere, and that collaboration and you come to a space to collaborate. But there’s also opportunities to go off and work by yourself as well, which is fine, or work in small groups, or you can go and attend a lecture. But it’s allowing those different types of space types to be there so that people can utilise them as and when they need to. So they’re allowed to kind of co-create the way that they learn, and what they’re learning and take responsibility for themselves because, inevitably, that’s what they’re going to have to do when they go into the workplace. They’re going to have to take responsibility for themselves. So getting them to kind of work through those skills in university and through space is so important.

Heather Taylor: Brilliant. Emily, thinking about what we see in university spaces, what is the role and significance of signs?

Emily Danvers: Okay. Well, signs are very very very small part of space, and they often go completely unnoticed, particularly when we’re very familiar with spaces and the signs within them. And we talked a bit earlier about how signs help us know the way. And you talked about not knowing which path to go to because there wasn’t a sign. That’s an obvious function of a sign, which is wayfinding.

But there are other functions of signs to kind of give us instructions, to tell us to do particular behaviours, to tell us what not to do, and to tell us how to work within a room, in terms of the environment or the accessibility of the space. So signs are really important messages about what’s happening here and how we should use the space. And I guess I’ve been drawn to a recent project around signage, which was in conversation with a colleague that worked in Sweden. This colleague in Sweden, where they work, they have, like, a sort of an institute or something. I can’t remember, but it’s almost like a central department that organises the design of university spaces, and they were doing a project on signage, and that’s how we got talking about it. And it’s just those yeah. We were interested in what they’re telling us about what happens here and what they’re not telling us. And I suppose they’re a small thing – I’m thinking about the context of a strange university sector. There are small things we could do relatively cheaply to help us better improve our spaces. So that’s what drew me to a project from signage. And, of course, like everything else, talks about all of this being active, spaces are active, they give us all these sort of subtle messages, and signs do exactly the same thing, they’re not backdrop. They do something within the space.

Simon Overton: Can you give us an example of what you mean by, some of the signs that you’ve just talked about?

Emily Danvers: So I look particularly at space, just at the general teaching space. There’s interesting studies about how, kitchens are used in buildings and all that stuff. But I just look specifically at teaching spaces. And I suppose and I literally counted how many signs there were and the kind of signs there were. And pretty much the majority of them are around technology. So it’s about how to set the Zoom room, and that’s about it. And there’s also quite a few do not signs, but, obviously, in English, it’s always ‘please do not’. But in Swedish, you don’t have that. But it is just like, ‘please don’t touch this’ or ‘please don’t eat in here’. You know, there’s a lot around what you shouldn’t do. It’s controlling. It’s supposed to be very quite sanitised, quite neutral. They could be used by anybody. It’s the technology leads because that’s where all the signs are and they’re right by – they’d normally buy the lectern. So whether so it just it just gives these sort of messages that this is a room where we look here at this tech, and this is what we do in this space. We use their tech. And it’s only a little thing, but it made me think about what else could be there.

And another example we have at Sussex, it says a one page thing, which is really helpful, and it has, like you know, it says things like ‘your lectures must end at 10 to the hour’. You like, ‘this is who to call if there’s a fire’, whatever. But it doesn’t tell me – and it said ‘don’t move the furniture’. And it’s just but it doesn’t tell you what to do. It doesn’t tell you, like, what do I do if my teaching goes wrong? That happens all the time in those spaces. The fire alarms are less likely to happen there. I’m not saying they’re not important. But I suppose I was just interested in what is there and what isn’t. And so I guess I think what it was telling me by terms of what I can see.There was limited signage about how to use the room, how to set up the space. Often, they have these, like, layout suggestions, but if you looked at the room, they never looked anything like the layout signs on the wall, so I don’t know what they were there for. But you wouldn’t even know in many places that it was a university at all. I think I saw a few signs around, like, that indicated that something some teaching happened here. Maybe some leftovers of a conference or left over bits of student. There’s no student work anywhere, on campus at all in any of the teaching rooms. No student work. Like, that’s outrageous. Like, if I guess, you said earlier about primary classrooms. I know they’re different, but, like, why don’t we have student work on our walls? I saw one sign in Pevensey that said something about active learning or action learning, but I think that related to a research project. Some had murals, like, one of the there was lovely one in Arts and some poster that said it what kind of subject it was, but there was you know, it’s very limited. It was really about technology dominating. Humans are actually a bit of a nuisance because they might steal stuff or touch stuff or make things dirty. And I think it just yeah. We’re suggesting that it tells us something about pedagogy. It tells us that these spaces are not just for us. And even if we are, we’re not the most important people here. The most important thing is that these spaces can be used again and kept tidy. And going back to what you said about the cleaners, like, it’s been the space, the people in control of the space in that sense, making sure it’s tidy and together and no one steals anything. It’s not that’s not important, but there’s no pedagogical decision making anywhere in any of those rooms. And it feels like an absence that we should be doing something about. And, essentially, you wouldn’t really know it’s a university. And, certainly, you wouldn’t know it’s Sussex or what Sussex does or what it claims to be. And I know what Sarah is saying only about multifunctional spaces, and I think that’s super important too. And that’s it’s hard to navigate, how you do that. But they were it certainly they certainly looked a little unloved, a little standardised, and not very pedagogical at all. And I think that might tell us something about the state of the university sector.

And so that’s where my research project is going. We’ve we’re getting, comparable data in Sweden just to see maybe where we looked at Sweden and some Nordic countries don’t we as examples of how things should be done. Although that I don’t think it’s as simple as that. But I’d yeah. So that’s where our work’s going. So it’s in its early stages. I’ve done my data collection at Sussex, and we’re starting to notice some things. And we’re mostly noticing what signs that aren’t rather than what signs there are. Yeah, I’m just I’m really interested in it because it’s one of those things we just don’t even notice, but they tell us they’re giving students messages all the time and us as educators.

Sarah Lawrence (39.13): I think that’s one of the things with working with an existing campus, and it’s that is that traditional, the traditional style of teaching, which just doesn’t really work for current pedagogy and curriculum. But often so in terms of, like, architecture and design projects of when we’re working with an existing building, often things will be undertaken like utilisation surveys. So that’s really understanding how spaces are used, and they’re a great tool because they really show to anyone who’s making decisions higher up that certain spaces just aren’t working, and they’re just not functioning. And because they’re not working, people aren’t using them because they don’t know how to use them, or they just don’t want to because they just don’t function.

And there was a project I worked on in Denmark, which was about analysing auditorium spaces. And they were found that they were used 40% of the time, which is way under what they should be. And it’s because they just weren’t they weren’t spaces that people wanted to utilise or needed to utilise. They wanted spaces where they could meet in a small group or they could meet individually. And being able to have that opportunity to do that, those big auditory spaces just weren’t working, so they weren’t using them. So I think that’s one thing. Like, understanding the utilisation of spaces is a great way to really work out how spaces are being used and what the potential is.

And then I think in terms of obviously, in new campus design, the way-finding and the graphics and the signage is almost, it should be built into the design of a campus. And that’s again where conversation between the people who use it, journey mapping, things like that is so important. Knowing the day-to-day tasks, things like the lighting, knowing what signage there needs to be, and also being allowing it to be adaptable so that it can be added to without having to do, like, a laminated A4 piece of paper that’s stuck on the wall so you can add to it. So it’s a strategy that you can then add to as the space develops and as people use the space. So it’s not – and I think, again, this is the issue with existing buildings and some of the existing buildings and campuses is that there isn’t that opportunity for change. And it’s just not built in, and it wasn’t built in in the 1st place. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done and it can’t be it can’t be changed. But it really is about understanding how to use those spaces to their full potential. But things like the ‘please don’t’ signs do go against what those spaces are trying to do in terms of new curriculum design and pedagogy about asking people to make decisions for themselves. You’re immediately telling people not to make a decision. You’re telling them what to do. So it’s something to think about.

And that’s when you were talking, I was thinking about, obviously, it’s to do with funding and things like that. And I think it does start to come through perhaps more in primary schools and secondary schools because there’s been more funding into those types of spaces. And I think it is feeding through into the higher education spaces, but it’s almost like it’s a long-term thing that has to happen or does happen quite gradually. But, yeah, it’s again that kind of relationship between all the stages of education design and feeding it through and encouraging students from those very early stages or children to understand how spaces are intended to be, intended to be used. But effective signage should really, you should really work with the design of a space to support and guide and prompt, and not necessarily direct in a very prescriptive way.

Emily Danvers: Well, especially things about, like, not eating and not moving stuff. Like, not moving stuff, like you said, goes against what we want to do as teachers. Not eating is unrealistic. Like, many of our students are coming straight from work and not like, I understand you’re not going to eat a three course meal, but, like, like, does it matter? Again, but it’s about, like, why are we assuming these people are a nuisance?

Sarah Lawrence: I think one of the things is as well, it’s about creating spaces that people have respect for. And if you create spaces that people want to be in and they want to use and they feel has been really tailored and suited to suit them and has been built for them, they will have much more respect for it and want to naturally respect it rather than having to be told you must do this.

Heather Taylor: Yeah. It is a weird one, that no eating. It’s not like they’re going to come up to the computer and pour their dinner on it, is it? You know, it’s yeah. No one abides by that rule anyway. So, thankfully, they’re not, you know, they’re not, are they? I’m like, I don’t care. You know? Yeah.

Emily Danvers: Then why have the sign there? Like, there were so many signs related to COVID still on campus, and you’re like, oh, okay. Like, signs and some signs are related to, like, overhead projectors, and it’s just like, has no one gone round and just tidied up? It was bizarre. The only signs that were, like, up to date and in every room were there was a sticker on almost all doors, which was a QR code of the timetable. That’s useful. And there was a sticker on every door, which was like the cleaning schedule, and it had ticking. But everything else was a bit random, to be honest. There was no real consistency. There was some lovely signage in all sorts of spaces, particularly in, like, some of the newer buildings. Yeah. There was some lovely signage, but in general, there was no consistency or, yeah, or sometimes it did look a little bit unloved, to be honest.

Simon Overton: What would a really good learning space look like to you? And then I thought I’d ask, Sarah that one first.

Sarah Lawrence (45:02): I think it depends on the context. So it depends on what the space is and where it is and who it’s for. But I think, fundamentally, it needs to reflect not only, like, current curriculum and pedagogy and not current students and teachers and learners, but it needs to, as I said, allow for the future as well. So it needs to have that adaptation. But it also needs to work in a way that if it’s – because open plan spaces don’t always work for everyone. And there’s been studies where schools and universities tried to replicate what happened – what’s been done in Hellerup, and it just doesn’t necessarily work for the context of where they are located and who they’re with, the community that they’re serving, the people who are going to use it. So it’s really important to understand who the users are, how they use this you utilise the space, understand how existing spaces are utilised. That’s where things like utilisation studies are really important, and the kind of strategy, and so much of education design is done in the very early stages. So it’s not just about kind of the finished design. It’s really about those early, early design stages where you’re exploring what’s needed, what size spaces. Obviously, there’s things in terms of there’s a whole other layer of things in terms of, like, building regulations and things like that and guidance in terms of, like, minimum space standards and things like that. But it’s really fundamentally about understanding what’s needed, by educators and learners, and understanding curriculum and pedagogy.

And a lot of – so when I’ve worked on education projects and practices that I’ve worked at, a lot of those practices will also undertake research projects. And those research projects will be into, like, the future of education design. I’ve worked on projects where it’s about the future of museums and the future of libraries, and it’s really about understanding what’s needed in terms of, like, curriculum and pedagogy, but then how to design physical spaces that respond to that and also the future of that. Because we don’t know what that will be, but it’s important to allow that kind of, that flex that really allows those spaces to respond.

So there’s not – and also there’s another – there’s obviously the overlying thing of technology as well. And that’s just, and AI, and things like that. And all these but all of these things are factors that just are changing all the time. There will always be something that is new and changes. So it’s understanding how to, how to allow for that flexibility and adaptability whilst creating spaces that people can actually utilise and understand how to utilise. So they’re not just empty spaces. They’re not just big open plan spaces that people don’t know what to do with. And that’s where, obviously, when I was talking about, like, acoustics and lighting and things like that, that’s so important, because they allow you to change the nature of a space just through feel and atmosphere. So that’s where it is, that kind of subconscious. You know how to use a space because of how it feels and how the lighting is, rather than kind of a necessarily a, like, visual sign telling you what to do. I don’t know if that answers the question.

Simon Overton: Emily, I know it’s a tricky question, but what would a really good and really effective learning space look like to you?

Emily Danvers (48.36): Yeah. In general well, this is hard to give a standardised answer, but I mean, in some ways, like, we might think we want everything to be, as you said, Sarah, like, kind of flexible, multiuse control. I think control of lighting is really key. But there are some like, for example, your standard lecture room, and there are all sorts of types on campus, including some that are very traditional with chalkboards and clunky wooden seating and some that, it’s a lecture hall and you know what you have to do there, and you and they’re perfectly designed for lecturing.

So, like, on the one hand, maybe that’s actually okay. I think it’s when we have those more seminar spaces that they don’t always work so well. I think the lecture theatre – if you’re doing a lecture, even though obviously the idea of lectures changed a little bit over time, they’re quite functional for the traditional lecture. But they don’t necessarily function for that kind of active learning space. And then going back to the Swedish project, those seminar rooms are called active learning classrooms. And so I think even that active naming, I think, is quite interesting.

But, yeah, again, anything that’s kind of flexible that has, good control of lighting, where the where it isn’t always like it’s like we don’t always want all your furniture to point towards the TV. Like, maybe it doesn’t always have to point towards the computer all the time while recognising that still is a really important part of what we’re doing here.

So, yeah, echoing exactly what you said about multifunctional space technology. Coming back to signs, I mean, I think we need to do further research. I mean, I think we just analyse it from our perspective, but we probably would love to speak to people about how what kind of signs they would like to have. What kind of signs would I like to have? I suppose I think it’d be nice. I mean, I don’t know how whizzy it would be, but our signs should be very easy to access in multilingual ways. We don’t have any braille or audio signs anywhere, so they’re completely inaccessible anyway. Definitely more pathfinding signs to get around because there aren’t very many at all.

In terms of the signs themselves, I think it’d be good to have more pedagogic guidance, how to use the space, signs or namings that might communicate the type of learning that might occur there. I think no ‘please not’ ‘please don’t signs’, but maybe some ‘please do signs’ if we have them. Maybe this is cheesy, but I think if you have, like, student quotes about what they love about teaching at Sussex, like, why couldn’t that be on the sign? I don’t know. Just there’s something there. It needs to have much more function and personality and be less instructional. And I think what that function and personality has to come from research, going back to what you said earlier with all of our stakeholders. At the moment,  like you said, most people don’t notice them. So it’d be really interesting to speak to educators about how they notice them.

And also it’d be nice if the signs were both were communicating to students as well as to educators. Because at the moment, they’re this is how the educator does this, but why can’t there be signs around, like, this is an active learning classroom, you know. Feel free to do this, but put it back. Like, giving people responsibility, but equally students use those spaces all the time. You often see students practicing things or being in those classrooms. They’re entitled to move freely across the university in that way, and speaking to them through those signs would be helpful too. So I don’t have the answer of what makes a perfect sign, but I know our signs currently aren’t working. And this is not unique to Sussex. I’m sure we’re going to find exactly the same data in Sweden, and I’m sure if you went to any other university. But I think these are small ways we could do more, I think.

Heather Taylor (52.03): I really like the point you made earlier on about why isn’t student work on the walls. And I think that I know student work isn’t a sign in an explicit way, but it kind of implicitly is, isn’t it? If you’ve got something like, actually, in Pevensey 1, we do have, research posters from PhD students on one wall. And I think that having more of these visually appealing sort obviously, you’re not going to go putting students’ essays on the walls. But if there’s things where they’ve created an infographic like they do in some of my modules or a poster or, you know, something like that. I think that sometimes they make Lego models, you know, out of things, and I think that actually having those things on the wall, in the classrooms is a really lovely idea because of it’s acknowledging the students’ work for a start. It sort of models, to other students that this is the sort of things you can do. You know? These are the sorts of things that students do. But, also, it’s just, like, showing them this is a place that learning happens. These are the outputs from that learning.

Simon Overton: Think so as well. And in fact, I do wonder I mean, yeah, having an essay would be a little bit problematic, but sometimes in my teaching it’s been really helpful to have examples, and I would print them and stick them up on the wall, and I would say, right, this thing that I’m going to ask you to write, here’s a sample, and this gets a C, and this is why. And this one gets a B, and this is why. And this one gets an A, and this is why. You know? And then they’ve got the chance during their preparation for the writing to go around and actually have a look and to get a really good sense of that.

So I think – or even I was just thinking, like, in a seminar room sort of showing what active listening looks like. Showing, how to involve other people in conversations and all of the things that people, academics especially, worry about and want to try and do better. It’s like, well, why not have pictures of them? I mean, you know, if only just to sort of brighten the place up a little bit. But, actually, you know, you could do it. You could say, alright. Let’s say you’re doing, like, think-pair-share. You know? And you want to get them into twos, then you want the twos to go into a four. You know? Like, in a seminar room, you’d have it right there. You’d be able to point to the wall and say, look, this is think-pair-share. You ever think by yourself. That’s picture one. Then you get into a pair, and you tell the person you pair, and then you get into a four. And then and it’s right there, and it’s there, and it can be used for a really solid pedagogical purpose. And it’s visual as well, which, you know, in terms of people that prefer getting the input in that way. I think it could be a really lovely thing. I love the idea of putting student work on the walls. I’m going to carry that in my heart. And for the rest of my time at Sussex, and I’m going to try and make sure that that happens somehow.

Sarah Lawrence (55.08): I think the opportunity with that is as well obviously, with university spaces, they’re used by different, subjects, by different teaching. Even if you have work in a room that isn’t related to your subject, it presents an opportunity for other students for different subjects to see what other students are doing. And there might be something that they take from that, which is they wouldn’t have otherwise had any idea about because they would never have seen it anywhere else.

Emily Danvers: Like, all the dissertation titles over the years. That’d be amazing to see, wouldn’t it? And I love that feeling when I’m in a room and like you said, if all you’ve got to do in these really bare rooms is literally stare at people. Like, why not have a few things to look around just like we do in our homes? Like, we like stuff to look at. Like, it’s the same in a learning space. Why isn’t there any stuff to look at? Because otherwise, we’re just going to look at our phones.

Sarah Lawrence: And I think one of the things about that is and it’s always a practical thing of, like, who takes responsibility for updating things like that? Like because sometimes things can be left for and especially, I think, in creative, like, I’ve when I’m when I’ve studied and when I’ve worked, things can be left for ages. But handing that responsibility over to educators and learners and saying, okay, this year, we need to refresh and put up you could put up your work and but allowing giving other people responsibility to do it, to encourage it, to happen, allows that kind of personalisation of space, but avoids that kind of stuff being up for, like, 10 years and becomes outdated and things like that.

But I think the naming of the spaces as well, when you were saying about, like, active learning spaces and things like that. And that’s kind of and I think this will eventually start to feed through from the kind of primary school education where it’s definitely changed in terms of the way that spaces are utilised, even if they’re still a kind of they’re working within traditional layouts. But students coming through to university stage now have a different understanding of how to utilise space and more freedom in terms of how to utilise space because they’re starting that off in their curriculum when they first start learning. And those opportunities for freedom and interaction and being encouraged to communicate and collaborate and work together starts to feed into those university spaces. So they immediately think, well, why aren’t I being allowed to move the furniture around? That’s what I did before when I was at secondary school or primary school. I was encouraged to do that to me. Yeah. So, eventually, that will impact on university.

But, yeah, just changing the way that spaces are named in terms of, like, active learning. Immediately provides a guide as to what is meant to happen in that space. But it doesn’t – it’s not prescriptive. It doesn’t tell you exactly what you have to do, but it’s like this space is about engagement and dynamic learning, and you’re encouraged to speak and collaborate. Because like you were saying with, like, the lecture theatres, that’s immediately recognisable as, like, an amphitheatre space. It’s like a a stage, a production, and you recognize that. And those spaces are definitely needed.

But it’s all those other spaces and also the in-between spaces as well, when we’re talking about, like, circulation spaces, those can become collaboration spaces where you meet someone in the corridor and you have a discussion about it, but you want to sit down and there’s nowhere to sit. And creating those kind of spaces that you can – it’s more about kind of, like, those kind of accidental dialogues that people will have, but allowing and encouraging that to happen in education spaces. And, again, that’s where signage is so important because it can either restrict or encourage, and you really want it to kind of encourage in those education spaces.

Emily Danvers: I guess we have, like, seminar room as an idea. But even seminar, I guess, I can imagine what the etymology might be of seminar. And, like, it probably has, like, masculine undertones or whatever. I don’t know. And I’d absolutely love The Daily Mail story if we decided to change all of our seminar rooms to active learning classrooms, for a particular stance. I’d love that.

Simon Overton: Woke university.

Emily Danvers: Yes. Do it.

Heather Taylor: You’d have all these teachers turning up, though, that have prepared a seminar, and they’ll go, oh, no. Do you know what? They’re walking into a room, and it says I’ve got to be active.

That might be a good thing, though. Encourage them.

Emily Danvers: But maybe I just don’t know whether the word seminar has those same…

Simon Overton (59.39): When I went to university, we had seminars, and it was quite funny because nobody really knew what to do in a seminar. We thought that all of university was going to be people just talking to us. And I remember the person leading it was trying to get conversations going, and everyone was just silent. And it was it was just awful. It was just terrible. And, clearly, they needed to have some sort of key skills or something like that to explain what was going on.

But I think if it had been called literally anything else, it would have worked so much better. If instead they were called workshops, then we’d be like, ‘okay. I sort of know what a workshop is’. Or like a discussion. Anything other than this sort of unfamiliar word that’s never used in secondary schools, that nobody comes to university necessarily knowing what to do with that word.

Emily Danvers: I suppose lecture isn’t a familiar pedagogy to many people either.

Heather Taylor: These days, that sort of format of you stand at the front and just talk at people for an hour, like, you can’t really do, I mean, some people do, but it’s not ideal. Like, they’re going to switch off in about 5 minutes. So even the setup of a lecture theatre isn’t ideal for the bits where you. It’s almost like, you know, like, they because they’re all facing forward. And it would be nice if there was a bit more space and the chairs could swivel. You know? So when you want them to talk to each other, if they could swivel, like, towards each other without having to be all like do you know what I mean? Feeling weird about it or looking behind them. So almost like if their chair could do, like, a 360-degree spin, they would feel as though they were allowed to talk to the person sitting behind them or do you know what I mean? Because they’re sitting like this, I feel like they’re restricted that they’ll only do that to talk with people. And you go, you can move about, and they’re not getting up.

Simon Overton: And then and then they talk to the people that they came in with.

Heather Taylor: Yeah. Exactly. So even that, even lecture theatres, these days, for, like, the sort of modern lecture where you’re trying to change what you do every, I don’t know, like, every 10 or 15 minutes so that people are not going to sleep, but, you know, like, to really sort of, like, jump start them into a now we’re doing this so that they don’t get, like, fatigue, basically, of just listening. The lecture theatres are rubbish for that, to be honest. Not just – I’m not saying ours are, all lecture theatres.

Emily Danvers: But there are some – but that’s your pedagogy. I think there’ll be some people that would say that’s like, some people, for example, love a chalkboard still.

Sarah Lawrence (1.02.34): Well, that’s when I think it’s like the utilisation things are so great because they show how those spaces are used. And if they are underused in those type of layouts, then it provides that reason for making that change. But that’s what I was looking at when we were working on the project in Denmark. They had these kind of it was about adapting their existing auditoria to do those kinds of things that you were talking about, Heather. The kind of, if they want to go and break out and work in small groups, the space can allow that to happen. So, it was about movable furniture, movable partitions. And it’s just about showing people how to utilise those spaces. So, explaining people to people how they can utilise those spaces because those spaces are great unless you explain how they’re intended to be used. And that’s where things like just moving the furniture, like the chairs, and rotating them around is quite a simple solution because it allows people to make a very simple change to do a different type of teaching, and learning. But it’s again, and with the blackboard, it’s about thinking about what is needed depending on who is going to be using it. It isn’t about, like, one blanket change for all different types of education and subjects. It’s like, how do you – how do you work with the people who are going to be using the space to create the spaces that you’re that are needed?

I think I probably think so as well with, like, pedagogy and curriculum as well, where it’s giving people freedom to make decisions for themselves. And, again, it links in with that kind of more traditional way of teaching where it’s about telling people what to do and how they need to do it. But that’s changed, and it is about giving students and educators more freedom to choose the way that they learn and to create the space and create the learning for themselves. But it’s like how it that transition between the two things is quite difficult. But I think it again, it’s that the traditional kind of type of space that you’re working within evokes that kind of more restrictive signage, because that’s where the way that the space was created initially. So, it’s all kind of interlinked together.

Simon Overton: So the final question, and I think I’m going to start with Emily. Emily, my final question to you is if you had one top tip for people listening to bring into their next bit of teaching, related to what we’ve talked about today, what would that be?

Emily Danvers: Oh, interesting. Okay. So firstly, I think in relation to signage, I ask people to just look at the signs around them and ask whether they think they meet it meets their needs, and to communicate if it doesn’t, so that’s one. And the second one in relation to space more broadly, I would just emphasise that these are spaces that belong to us as educators and students and the wider university and that they can be used and work within. And we have the – we’re entitled to do that, and it makes learning better often if we think about our spaces differently. So, I would just encourage people to be, a bit braver, a bit more creative, and to sort of think about what the space does to their learning. So, they’re questions rather than exactly what to do. And it might be that spending 20 minutes moving the furniture isn’t what you wanted to do, but that’s not what I’m asking everybody to do. I’m saying, what is your space making possible?

Simon Overton: Lovely. And, Sarah, how about you?

Sarah Lawrence: I mean, I’d echo what Emily says as well. I think – think about the types of spaces that you’re using. And I think particularly for students, think about, and educators as well. Think about the way that you want to learn and the way that works best for you and the kinds of spaces that will help you to do that. Because I think, as we talked about, everyone learns, and everyone teaches in a different way as well. So, there’s no one right way of doing something. So, think about how you can adapt a space to suit what you want to do, obviously, within the parameters of what you’re allowed to do in the university, but also think about the spaces that are outside of those dedicated teaching or learning spaces.

I mean, one thing I didn’t mention to it was, like, outside learning as well. And taking learning outside. And that’s something that happens in primary school in terms of the spaces that are created, but also can happen all the way through to higher education as well and happens in the workplace as well. And I’d also say to think about, like, look at workplace design as well and, like, the future of work and what those spaces are like, like co-working spaces and what’s happening in in workplace, in terms of thinking how that can relate as well to education spaces as well. But have, like, freedom to think about the way that you want to learn and the way that you want to teach and how the spaces can do that for you.

Heather Taylor: I would like to say thank you to our guests, Sarah Lawrence and Emily Danvers.

Emily Danvers: Thank you.

Sarah Lawrence: Thank you.

Heather Taylor: And thank you for listening. Goodbye. This has been the Learning Matters podcast from the University of Sussex, created by Sarah Watson, Wendy Garnham, and Heather Taylor, and produced and today presented by Simon Overton. For more episodes as well as articles, blogs, case studies, and infographics, please visit blogs.sussex.ac.uk/learning-matters.