Designing innovative learning experiences. An experimental project to support education facilities

The new learning models, in continuous updating and development, are one of the fundamental coordinates leading to further reflections on the future of teaching. These are new pedagogical approaches of the "active learning" strand that aim at teaching-learning to promote greater effectiveness and efficiency in achieving the expected learning outcomes (i.e.Biggs’ Constructive alignment, Kolb’s Learning Cycle, Bandura’s Social Learning, Bloom’s taxonomy ad Dale’s cone..),with the maximum involvement of all the actors. The desire to stimulate the implementation of active and participative teaching needs, however, a new reflection on the spatial environment in which it is located and that should support the students, facilitating the process of involvement, participation, comparison enhancing their creativity and encouraging the development of their "soft skills". Environments that can guarantee: motivation, flexibility, personalization, collaboration and good behaviours. The lack of suitable spaces arranged for this ductility automatically disadvantages the correct execution of teaching, always linked to a more traditional and passive conception. Accordingly, colleges and universities around the world are facing the challenges of rethinking higher education facilities to respond to the emerging needs and these significant changes dealing with teaching activities facing future trends. One of the answers is the use of technology that can perform several key functions in the change process, including opening up new opportunities that improve teaching and learning particularly with the affordance of customization of learning to individual learner needs, which is highly supported by the learning sciences. The technology used in educational spaces must, therefore, make a transition from vertical technology (for teacher’s needs in a confined setting) to horizontal technology (for meeting students’ personal needs across multiple physical contexts). This paper focuses on the evolving requirements of learning spaces to become spatial supports able to make the lecture a learning experience developed by a network of people, a construction, and sharing of knowledge as a summation of the individuals involved through the use of innovative technology for learning. It will attempt to test within an existing campus: the Politecnico di Milano (Italy). The specific aim of this work is to present the emerging spatial needs due to the changes cited above, in order to support the active learning process, and test them with participatory activities, addressed both to academic staff and students. The expected results aim at a rethinking of the spatial model that allows supporting in the classroom this continuous mechanism of interaction between people and space, molding to the current needs, creating and encouraging the highest possible number of connections between the different actors present in the classroom. The final outputs are Learning space prototypes as a reflection of the university environment as an alive and vibrant organism, composed of constantly moving information flows through the actors, the spaces, and supports for a 360-degree performing use, able to reach a very high educational impact.