Personalised Learning: Personalising Space (2007)

Both of the following case studies relate to schools which radically transformed the
learning experience for students and then dealt with the redesign of learning spaces
afterwards. Ideally we could design spaces fit for learning in the 21st century and then
occupy them. In reality, personalised learning and the spaces in which it occurs
evolve together over time.

In 2000 I tried to predict how learning might look in the future. I was convinced, as I
still am, that…
• every child would have their own laptop or similar device with a permanent
internet connection.
• The diversity of approaches on the internet would lead to greater diversity of
work and pace from the students. This would challenge the traditional role of
the teacher and require students to be more self managing / peer managing.

Having predicted the key features, the next step was to set up a trial space and begin
testing the accuracy of my predictions. Setting up the equipment would take a few
weeks but transforming working practices, retraining teachers and students would
take many years so we decided to start with one group and use this as a learning
laboratory. We designed a space in which most subjects could be delivered so that the
equipment and infrastructure requirements were reduced.

It quickly became apparent that having the students remain in one ‘laptop area’ and
the staff come to them was the best aspect of the design as it provided much more
stability for the students, much less time setting up and closing down and encouraged
the teachers to use internet resources rather than traditional resources (that they would
have to carry !)

In order to accelerate creativity we provided students with teacher training, divided up

the learning objectives between the students and then gave them the freedom to
deliver the learning in any way they wanted to, providing they could demonstrate how
many children had learned what they were teaching.

Within six months, students creativity began putting strains on the ICT provision,
room design and surrounding spaces. Student’s engagement with their learning and
the progress they were making were both outstanding but the traditional classroom
design was placing considerable restrictions on their growing aspiration.
Over the next few years we expanded to more groups and developed a suite of rooms
with varied provision in each. We also had to expand and redesign the ICT
technicians area into a helpdesk facility. We converted art, music and technology
areas to allow for students released from the laptop suite to complete multimedia
work.

Over the subsequent three years, the diversity of student approach continued to
increase as did the requirement for diverse spaces. Students had spent two years
delivering peer learning: researching content on the internet, understanding it well
enough to teach it to the class and then assessing other’s progress. They had
developed most of the skills required for independent working and so now needed a
framework that would encourage them to develop their competencies. We used an
early form of PbyP (Personalisation by Pieces) as the framework for the development
and then allowed students to choose the content of their curriculum themselves. PbyP
ensured that they were able to evidence progress and have this progress assessed by
their peers even though the subject content, pace and approach varied from student to
student.

Progress was rapid with all of the thirteen year old students achieving a grade C
GCSE equivalent qualification after only five weeks of work within their chosen
subject. Such work increasingly required large spaces with two or three classes
combined into one working area and smaller facilities for quiet film and audio
recording as well as meeting rooms for students. Innovative software solutions
allowed teachers to monitor location, live work and progression of students even if
they were dispersed around the school. Despite this ability to use the whole site, a
significant constraint against further development was the need to run a ‘traditional’
school in the same building. Expansion was limited by the rooming needs of the
surrounding departments and the perception that departments needed to be clustered
around staff areas. We needed to develop display strategies and student leadership
schemes to manage these ‘laptop areas’ as they were effectively owned by students
and so students needed ways of taking control of the spaces.

Paul Kelly, headteacher of Monkseaton Secondary School also found that it was
through conducting work using an entirely different approach to teaching that he was
able to change the mindset of teachers away from classrooms and more towards open
flexible spaces.

The second case study provides further illustration of the need for building design to
be led by establishing changes in pedagogy. In The Five Islands School on the Isles
of Scilly, we needed to develop strategies that would allow students to experience
diversity of provision despite their isolated location and the small number of staff.
Once again we used PbyP to provide the framework for the development of a
competency based curriculum. With PbyP having progressed onto the web since the
Eggbuckland Project, it was now possible for students to have their work assessed by
students on the mainland which added additional appeal and diversity to the provision
immediately.

Headteacher Andrew Penman released half a day from the timetable and designed the
‘Federated Enrichment Afternoon’ so that it would provide opportunities to develop
competencies. As a federated all through school this initiative had to provide
genuinely challenging activities for students at all school ages that would allow them
to record progress. The school’s design is based on a model of classes of 30, mixed
age, in the primary phase and classes of between 10 and 20 in the secondary phase to
allow them to teach subjects in year groups despite small numbers.
In the first few months of the project it became clear that the class structure in the
primary phase made genuine personalisation extremely difficult as different paces and
activities had to overlap and students had to move between classes that were separated
by areas that could not be efficiently supervised. In the secondary phase the opposite
problem emerged in that popular courses were restricted in terms of space and those
requiring specialist facilities of any kind had to be scheduled into six week modules to
enable timetabling to occur.
The enrichment afternoon was considered by all to be a major success in terms of
providing students with impressive diversity and yet with the rigour of assessed
progress in competencies but modifications were agreed to take account of some of
the space restrictions. The whole process opened up an excellent dialogue between
primary and secondary colleagues and the contrasting models of space use that has
called some to question how a new design for the school would function. The
conclusions that are emerging bare striking similarity to those emerging from many of
the other long standing projects in the UK that have attempted to use ICT as a vehicle
for personalising or at least diversifying learning.

Using the findings from my work in these contexts together with case studies of other
schools I wrote future schools visions for the Microsoft BSF Envisioning guide in
which I projected forwards to suggest how schools may eventually operate if true
personalisation was achieved. These rather detailed descriptions are available through
the Microsoft BSF team but some of the key features are described below.

Student led services

Students who are empowered to take an active role in their learning begin to
question their democratic role within the school community and begin to
require challenges that enable them to play an active and positive role. Ideally
this requires the flexibility for them to determine and provide the services they
need. In the microsociety schools in the US this has progressed to primary
schools which are a fully functioning student led town. In BSF terms it is
allowing expansion of professional student reception, library facilities, cafés,
shops, radio, TV and office spaces. Some early schemes included such
facilities but without the pedagogic rationale for their use, resulting in
underutilisation of the spaces or the adoption of the facilities by keen staff.

1:1 provision facilities

If you start from the assumption that every student will have their own device
or ubiquitous access then the design of spaces and the need for ICT rooms
require questioning. The need for an ICT helpdesk facility and the ability to
handle student repair requests directly are critical. If the 1:1 device is a
handheld or USB drive then there needs to be a strategy for the dispersal of
access screens and dumb terminals that will have a considerable impact on the
building design.

Student movement
As staff move increasingly away from the front of the class and more towards
the mentor / facilitator role, the need for students to work on the same content
at the same pace decreases as does the need for movement between areas at set
times. This leads towards multifunction areas through which students can
work. Such design has the added benefit of meeting the research findings of
human scale education in which students perform much better when they feel
part of a stable community of between 90 and 140 others. Removing the need
for student movement then returns the wasted circulation space for more
productive use as well as pushing up the room usage rates and hence allowing
for more active spaces.

Learning frameworks
 Schools provide local hubs for learning and so offer a range of activities.
Clearly if the match between activities and need is not a good one then
students are at risk of slipping through the net. To avoid this, schools need to
develop competency frameworks that allow tracking. This then means that the
school can offer ranges of provision which allow learners to progress to
greater diversity and independence seamlessly as they demonstrate increasing
competence. Passive supervision, physical presence and online supervision
can use assistive technology that is integrated into the building.

Buildings that contain 21st century learning provision will not function efficiently if
occupied by a school that is teaching a traditional curriculum. Similarly, a school
built to the Victorian design of separate subjects in separate classrooms will not
efficiently enable the delivery of 21st century learning. The key, I believe, is to
accelerate the development of new pedagogy in the school and generate the
understanding in both teachers and students, of how learning spaces need to adapt.
One of the most effective ways of accelerating this is through the visiting existing
practice. Currently, however, visits and exemplars tend to concentrate on the building
design rather than the pedagogy which is driving it. I look forward to the day that
school visits are to talk to frustrated, forward looking staff in ancient schools who are
coping with restrictions but achieving transformation of pedagogy, rather than to
shiny new schools containing staff who are already planning to add more dividing
walls.