Mobilising Innovative Learning Environments Erasmus Project

Project Title

Mobilising Innovative Learning Environments

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Cooperation between educational institutions and business; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

With the growing of cities and conurbations in Europe, many new schools are built already or going to be built following the developing field of pedagogical architecture. There is a global tendency that schools are transforming from traditional corridor schools to innovative learning environments (ILE) which is a break with a long tradition with school design, and the demands on teaching and learning are increasing. Thus, there is a current need for an increased awareness of the relation between pedagogy and architecture to release the implicit and rich potential for facilitating teaching and learning in innovative (physical) learning environments.
The central objective is to support educators, youth workers, educational leaders and teacher trainers collaborating and using innovative learning environments. MOBILE seeks to contribute to an increased awareness on the occupation of learning environment, by extending and developing the competences of educators and other personnel who support learners. Also central will be reinforcing the development of key competences on the occupation of innovative learning environments for teachers and educational staff members.

The MOBILE project is a joint project between six participating organisations in three countries: Sophia::Academy and a Teacher Training Centre (D), ICS Advisors and Technasium foundation (NL) and Oslo local government and Norconsult (NO). Each of the six partners has knowledge and competence of different aspects on the physical learning environment, the collaboration will lead to insights and practical tools that are unique to each partner and will lead to a broadening of their own core competences. Sophia::Academy is a non-profit organization in North Rhine-Westphalia that supports development processes in the educational sectorand provides advanced training courses on the subject of “Room as third teacher” in workshops, congresses and specialist days. The Teacher Training Center in Düsseldorf [Zentrum für schulpraktische Lehrerausbildung (ZfsL)] has strong competence on teaching, learning and developing learning programs. On its Campus it operates an innovation centre for ILE (Rhine-Maas Center) which has been developed together with ICS and Sophia::Academy. ICSadviseurs is a renowned Dutch consultancy that has experience with more than 300 participative processes to develop innovative learning environments and school buildings in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Oman. Norconsult is Norway’s largest and one of the leading multidisciplinary consultancy companies in the Nordic region. Norconsult’s services are aimed at planning and the company is a leading player both nationally and internationally. Norconsult’s School department has broad experience from the educational sector and expertise in planning assignments on school structure, school types, student number predictions and conducting participatory briefing processes for architectural design briefs and conducting development processes for teachers on use of learning spaces. The local government of Oslo promotes energy-efficient meeting places that nurture pupils’ development, reflecting the pedagogical functionality and design of learning spaces thoughtfully.

The MOBILE project will, through collaboration, discussion and interaction, be carried out within a hermeneutic loop, develop outputs that will support educators to engage more effectively with ILEs. The smart combination of workshops, study trips, internships and seminars with partners from schools and administration as well as invited stakeholders and experts, will gather attention towards the variety of learning spaces and towards the link between learning spaces and pedagogy: Furthermore it will contribute to an awareness of how teachers and learners use the learning spaces. Therefore the project will develop the following outputs:
1. Pedagogical Post Occupancy Evaluation – a pedagogical based guideline for spatial/functional evaluation of ILE on the premises of education (PPOE),
2. Workshops for Teacher Training Centers to offer further education for professional of all school forms (TTT),
3. Index of Innovative Learning Environments (INDEX of ILE) – an autodidactic tool, that helps teacher teams to improve the spatial use of their learning environment by
themselves.
Through this combination of the different project activities the consortium is able to explore the experiences with ILE (PPOE), to link this to the development of (process) tools that will support future-oriented school development (Index or ILE); including the development of training courses for Teacher Trainers for direct implementation. Bringing these three components together is necessary for a successful implementation and is innovative. And more important: it will add knowledge and develop the field of Physical Learning Environments.

Project Website

http://learning-space.eu

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 269769 Eur

Project Coordinator

SOPHIA :: Akademie gGmbH & Country: DE

Project Partners

• ZfsL (Zentrum für schulpraktische Lehrerausbildung Düsseldorf)
• Oslo kommune Utdanningsetaten
• Norconsult AS
• Stichting Technasium
• ICSadviseurs BV