Alternative Design
We want to help designers of space think like futurists so we can become makers of a better future.
Alternative Design
Attracting the New Higher Ed Learner
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Kimball International proudly hosted Alternative Conversations: Attracting the New Higher Ed Learner, drawing together a panel of designers and industry leaders to discuss the future of academia. Against the backdrop of an ever-evolving educational landscape, the discussion illuminated key insights shaping the direction of higher education. Listen to this episode for the highlights of the conversation that promise to inform and inspire designers and educational leaders alike.
Read the blog, Four Insights Shaping the Landscape of Higher Education.
Watch the panel recording, Alternative Conversations: Attracting the New Higher Ed Learner.
Click on the following link to claim your CEU credits (AIA/HSW, IDCEC/HSW):
https://www.ceuevents.com/online-audio-courses/kimball_international/attracting_the_new_higher_ed
Welcome to the Alternative Design Podcast, where we explore the power of foresight and design to create future-ready spaces. In each episode, we talk to diverse voices to discover the ways our world is changing and uncover insights that will influence the built environment of tomorrow. I'm your host, kaitlin Reed, an interior designer and certified futurist, and I want to help designers think like futurists so we can take actionable steps today to become makers of a better future.
Speaker 2We recently held a virtual panel titled Attracting the New Higher Ed Learner the Future of Education, and in this episode we're going to share that conversation, along with some practical insights for designers to consider as they shape the learning environments of the future. Our panel featured education futurist author and public speaker, brian Alexander, dean of the University of Cincinnati's Lindner College of Business, marianne Lewis, and Principal at renowned education firm Collins Cooper Carusi, fiona Grandowski. This discussion about who the future learners are, how do we attract them and how universities keep and support them was so amazing because of the diversity of perspectives from both inside and outside of the industry. Stay tuned afterwards where we share the four key takeaways and how they'll influence the design projects you have going on right now. This is episode 27,. Attracting the New Higher Ed Learner.
Speaker 1So the first question that I have who are the learners of the future and how would you describe them? This is an anyone play, I'll kick it off.
Speaker 3I mean, I think the learners of the future is all of us. I think the world is changing at ever. You know, the only constant is change, but that change is actually intensifying and I think it means the traditional learner, the nontraditional learner and everybody in between. So I think it's an exciting time for higher education. Also, their needs, the world's needs for that learning, continue to evolve. So it's nice to be among friends looking at it from different angles.
Speaker 4I agree completely with Marianne. That's extremely important to think about. We still have in mind the traditional 18-year-old as a student, but we are seeing more and more adult learners and hopefully institutions can pivot to better support students over 22. I would also add that we have for 20 years been growing our population of international students, but there may be problems with this, partly in the United States as we have struggles over immigration, but also as we see geopolitical problems based on different conflicts and wars around the world.
Speaker 5And I would probably add to these students. I absolutely agree with both Marianne and Brian. We as a population are the learners. It extends from the six-month-old in an early learning facility all the way to somebody who may be 70 or 80, who is looking really just to expand their horizons because we are all living longer and we are all very curious. We're inquisitive and at the same time, I think one thing about learners is that as a generation, or as multiple generations, we're also more cautious than we ever were.
Speaker 1I think what I'm hearing all three of you say is that we are seeing an evolution in the definition of the learner, instead of it being that traditional higher education 18 to 22. We're seeing something evolve into more of a lifelong learner, and I'd like to dig into that perhaps a little bit more. What's driving this evolution of lifelong learning?
Speaker 5This is again anyone's play, I think one of the, I'll go ahead and say something. I think that reimagining one's future is something that's been talked about for some time, but it's upon us, and technology and discovery are really playing pivotal roles in what this means and how it's being defined. So, as technology continues to evolve, it is taking away jobs and it is creating jobs, and that is one area where you can see it definitively in education and the transitions in different types of education and the transitions in different types of education Absolutely.
Speaker 4And I would add to that we lived through a golden age of enormous higher education expansion from the early 80s until about 2012. And ever since then, total enrollment has gone down and since most of American higher education is effectively private, and that is, we depend on tuition for revenue, this is exerting enormous stress which is, in turn, pivoting us to try and expand enrollment through whichever way we can be it online enrollment, international enrollment, more adult learners. But hopefully, as Fiona pointed out, the transformations of society driven in part by technology, in part by social forces, will send more and more people flocking back to colleges and universities in order to reskill and rethink, in order to prepare themselves for the middle and the leader part of the 21st century.
Speaker 3But I would also stress the importance of access, and a growing focus of higher education is how do we make sure it's not just the same population that's always been learning, because those demographics are nosediving and so it's first generation, it's longer learning, it's also, I think, brian, to your point. The international population is both incredibly challenging and important to all of us. To how are we working across geographic divides?
Speaker 1So we're in the midst of a reskilling revolution, right, that's being driven by tech evolution and new discovery and new skills that are needing to be, you know, offered and adopted by the workforce broadly. I believe the last I checked there was a stat that was mentioning that over 50% of the workforce would need to be, you know, upskilled or reskilled by 2025, which is a pretty staggering number. So there's lots of new things for folks to learn. But we're also seeing that total enrollment is down. But we do know that many universities depend on enrollment tuition, and so right now, as a design community, as futurists, as university instructors and professionals and leaders, we are trying to understand what is going to attract these learners.
Speaker 1Expanded definition of students is going to be extremely critical moving forward, and that has the power to shape the classrooms that we are designing for the future, for the designers that have projects here and now, today. That will clearly influence how those spaces need to be designed to support those new expanded definition of learners. But let's dive into the specific perspectives. Marianne, we understand that Lindner at UC has gained national acclaim for record-breaking student applications and enrollment. The university at large has seen an increased enrollment of 5.39% in the fall of 2023. Can you tell us what you can attribute that success to?
Speaker 3Well, I appreciate that, knowing that we're kind of bucking the trend and I don't take it for granted because we are the only school in Ohio that's been growing and I think part of that is this powerful combination we're trying to tap into with both excellence and access. So we've I'm talking about my college, for example have doubled the number of first gen students two years in a row, so doubled it twice. That is incredibly important as an urban university because that's opening education as a powerful door for people who've never had that access and, by the way, to have the excellence working with it, it requires different types of wraparound support than we've seen before. So how do we make sure we make the most of that? I think the second piece is the first gen is one and the second is online education. I'm grateful to be a school that was already very much involved in online education pre-pandemic. It helped us hit the ground running and now we're seeing it's opened up a whole new world for people who are working or the more non-traditional students, but also for our traditional students. The line between in-person and remote is absolutely blurring very quickly and to us I think that's the combination first gen and online.
Speaker 3Maybe I would just make another note, and I don't have. I just think this is a fascinating example. I'm about to chair the accreditation review of Arizona State, which is the largest university or, in well, the largest business school, certainly in the US. It's 21,000 students and I think we're big at 5,500. And their counterpart, arizona, is going the opposite direction. University of Arizona and my read so far is something similar around they're about 10 to 1 online to in-person now at Arizona State and a very focus on being inclusive and elevating access, but not at the trade-off of quality and excellence. And I think if we start trading off, we're going to have much bigger problems. That's not the point of education. So how do we make them work?
Speaker 1together. That's really great and, Fiona, I know when we spoke, you know you had mentioned to me that Collins Cooper Carusi is actually looking at more of a competitive landscape. That enrollment is also up in the South, and so how is that influencing your projects and the way you're designing learning spaces right now?
Speaker 5Yeah, so our perspective is not necessarily a single university but more of a global perspective of Georgia universities. So you know, what we are seeing with the universities is, yes, there's incredible competition across from university to university and the students are looking at the amenities, they're looking at the programs, they're looking at the amenities. So you mentioned the residence hall that we just completed at Kennesaw State University. That is part of their program to really cultivate the first year student. And I think that we've talked or we will talk a little bit about retention.
Speaker 5It's in the title is how do you keep the students once you have them? So the competition to get the students, that's one thing, but how do you keep them and how do you meet their needs? And so we're looking at it in terms of not just the classroom as the traditional classroom, but how do you create spaces where students can thrive on campus throughout their entire space and time on campus, on campus, and there's a lot of things that are going into this thinking. Yes, they want the fun things that support them, but one of the things that's coming out of the pandemic and I hope we can talk more about this is about mental health and how do we create spaces where students can find their place, to thrive, in terms of whether it's study, whether it's a space to find solitude, but also be amongst many. Every learner is different and every person is different, and mental health has really affected us across the nation, but the education zone is even more increasingly impacted.
Speaker 1I agree, Brian, just from your high-level view. What are some other trends that are happening outside of the education industry that are influencing the demands on future learning environments and for future learners?
Speaker 4I just I want to second the motion about mental health, which is obviously true. There's also a sense of physical health. I mean, this is not news, but we keep seeing wellness programs being advanced everywhere and there's really nothing pushing back on that, especially for younger students. I think also there's a huge generational gap in concern about the environment and climate change and basically people over 30 are much less interested in climate change in poll after poll than people under 30.
Speaker 4And I think this plays out in some interesting ways thinking about designing buildings that are ecologically not just friendly but perhaps carbon negative, perhaps thinking about more ecological housing. So this is where all kinds of design issues come in, from materials to biophilic design. I think also there's the sense of and this is controversial, but students being more and more politically active and it may be interesting to figure out ways of supporting them. Again, for me, this comes back to, in part, climate change and thinking about ways of supporting students' climate interest on campus. This could be the form of campus food production, which means making the campus's natural environment much more interesting, much more green and much more integrated with the campus curriculum, as well as research.
Speaker 1And I really wanted to really spend some time nurturing that conversation and even students having the opportunity to choose universities and education experiences based on their values, based on whether that's political affiliation, whether that's something they're interested in. We take a look at things like everyday activism and opportunities more and more for students to select opportunities and learning environments that align to their personal beliefs, their values, and to customize their own learning experience to their personal beliefs, their values and to customize their own learning experience. We also know, as design industry members, that sustainability and education can be a little bit of a challenge, and so, using what Brian had mentioned and understanding that we have this whole future cohort of learners young learners right now that this is really something that matters to them, and so I'm interested in what Collins-Kubrick-usey is really doing as a leader in designing learning environments. How can designers work with universities to create sustainable solutions for both today and in the future?
Speaker 5I think that it is challenging. Not all education leaders embrace sustainability, but there are some things that, as designers, we should just do. It's the right thing to do. We can be thankful for LEED and what LEED has I don't want to say forced, but it greatly encouraged manufacturers across the nation and around the world to be more sustainable. So there's a level of sustainability that we should just do. We should have healthy environments. We should not have harmful VOCs in our buildings.
Speaker 5This is a no-cost ad for the owner and oftentimes the sustainability is about talking to the owner about what is right, what is sustainable, but still not increasing their budget by any stretch. So you know how can we manage water more efficiently. A lot of this is in code now, so some of it is just not a question anymore. You know at least for us in Georgia low flow toilets. You know hands free faucets and so forth. These are simple things to do and they help us meet our energy code, as well as energy efficient lighting. Now the next step is how do we take that energy efficient lighting and take it to the next level and have it be more manipulatable?
Speaker 5How can you incorporate circadian rhythms? Because not every space, although we are very fortunate. We have lots and lots of windows. Number one add windows. Number two when you don't have windows, how can you still manage the sense of the day through your design? And then, biophilic again add windows. First and foremost, I think that as designers, we need to stretch what biophilic and other attributes of what a sustainable building looks like as much as we can.
Speaker 1I love the fact, fiona, that you're saying that there are low-hanging fruit opportunities, there are low-cost ads, that you know it's just the right thing to do from that sustainability standpoint and really speaking to your stakeholders and finding creative solutions that, again, are going to be that low cost ad. Yeah, marianne, I'm going to come to you because in your book Both and Thinking, you suggest that embracing paradox and adopting more of a this and that mentality can lead to much better outcomes, and so I'm interested in how universities can perhaps reimagine the campus experience to accommodate learners who want to blend online and offline learning. Is it a yes?
Speaker 3and oh, it has to be a yes, and I think, and I think it pushes us to question ourselves about what's the greatest value for the in-person experience as well as the digital experience, and I don't I mean based on the employers I speak with. All the time they're having the same conversations about the future of work. It is the same right. So how do you dive in? For example, it's no longer fitting to do the sage on the stage kind of approach, typically in a big lecture hall. I'm not saying sometimes you don't use that, but I think we've all learned the value of what we call in education the flipped classroom is that when you're going to be in person, the point of being around a table is to interact, is to roll up your sleeves, to practice. And some of the areas that we've learned are so critical to practice are literally the human interactions. Not just the problem solving kind of work you're doing, but the teaming, the relationship building, the communicating, the looking people in the eyes. That all takes building some comfort in the discomfort, which does tend to work particularly well in person.
Speaker 3I do think we've gotten much better online, but that shifts us. Then we look at the online piece and one way to think about that is the ultimate flexibility, the adaptability. How do you do asynchronous in the right size? I mean, we have the cognitive research right. What are the bite-sized chunks that are appropriate? How do you make those accessible to people, when, where, how you need them?
Speaker 3And then there's the hybrid right. When do you put these pieces together? Because there will be some learners who need 100% online because of access and flexibility, others who might choose the fully in-person experience, and I'm curious, you know, with your design, but increasingly we don't see a lot of 100% in-person, because even those students who are sitting in their dorms are going to take at least 10 percent of their learning opportunities online. Sitting in a dorm room that I can see out of my window, and that's not a bad thing, because that helps you also build skills for lifelong learning, because a lot of that learning is going to be online and that becomes then part of we teach people how to learn right, and and that includes modalities.
Speaker 1So to me, this is that kind of combination, fiona, I would love your perspective on, you know, the future shaping of learning environments and maybe even, speaking to some of the FLIPS classroom, what are you seeing? Is there really a move towards these more collaborative, team-based learning areas? Are you seeing this too?
Speaker 5Absolutely. We have been for years. Whether it's flipped, whether it's project-based, the key, what we're finding in our classrooms is adaptability. How can it be the stage on the stage one day and project-based the next day? And what does the technology look like to do that? Especially when you're talking about the stage-on-the-stage, the project-based and hybrid all at the same time. And this is what universities are looking at. To Marianne's point, even with the project-based learning, somebody's still trying to dial in. Absolutely.
Speaker 1Agreed In our pre-call Marianne, you and I discussed a different, you know, facet of the future of learning environments and really what the potential would be for universities and businesses to sort of have this partnership. And UC has a wonderful example of this sort of symbiotic relationship between universities and businesses example of this sort of symbiotic relationship between universities and businesses, and I believe that we're going to see more of this scale moving forward to start to offer some more of these, you know, curriculums and course offerings that are going to be hybrid, that you know are able to move from the sage on the stage to project base and hybrid, and so, as we continue to see this evolution, I think a big part of that is a stakeholder that perhaps you know the business and the corporate leaders who want to be heard about the kinds of skills that students are graduating with. So can you tell us what you see is doing right now and a bit about that symbiotic relationship that you guys are forming and I'll say it in a few ways.
Speaker 3I mean one is so. Uc invented something called cooperative education. Lots of schools do co-op now. It basically means our students iterate between being in the workforce and in classroom. So, with the employers, we're constantly having these conversations about what's needed, what's working, what's not. It reminds me of what Fiona just said about kind of K through 12, moving faster than higher ed. So does business, and I don't mean that in a broad, you know, in a negative way towards higher ed completely because we're at a research one institution. You tend to research until you feel confident and then you implement it. Well, these other places they're experimenting, trying it out, and the more symbiotic what happens is they and I'm going to go on the business side can help us ask better questions, push us to move faster, to start experimenting in the classroom.
Speaker 3Maybe if I could note one thing that might come to you, fiona, too, with design I mean something that this has also ended up pushing is some of our uses of space. I'm sitting in a beautiful gold lead building and we've already opened in 2019, three months before the pandemic and we've already reconfigured different spaces, some of which so that all of these visitors who every day are in this space from businesses don't have to be just standing in a classroom right. Spaces that look much more like soft furnishing high top table, these do not look like and they're not sitting out in our starbucks downstairs either. They're actually spaces designated for that kind of interaction within different stakeholders. I mean, I'm in a business school so they tend to be business, but they could be community leaders in a variety of ways too. So I don't know if you know, if you've seen, I think we're just all trying to get creative with space.
Speaker 5What we're seeing here is that these institutions talk about lifelong learning. They're not just training the new workers for these companies, but they're training the company's workers. They're doing additional training through these colleges for these entities. So if there's a college in the middle of Georgia, which I lovingly call the middle of nowhere, but they have a thriving business supporting Amazon and the Amazon fulfillment industry, which is really pretty impressive, so not only are they training the new employees, but they're training the current employees and with Amazon, this training is critical for you to move up to another level. So that connection with education and your lifelong thriving is important. That was actually able to happen because of our most recent workforce building with them, where we had space that was meeting space, multi-purpose space, but was flexible enough to adapt.
Speaker 5So back to mary ann's conversation how do we make sure that buildings can adapt for the future? It's so important. We're constantly working with clients where things are changing. Groups are merging and they need to adapt space, but it wasn't designed to adapt, so we're having to make more modifications than maybe the university was ever prepared to.
Speaker 5How, for the future, can we design space that is adaptable so that, yes, you can change some furniture and it becomes a space where a company is comfortable using it almost as a satellite office for this collaboration with the university and for helping to train their next generation, where the school needed to be adaptable enough that if they brought in a we're in Georgia a Chick-fil-A to collaborate with Chick-fil-A, where the students were the leaders and Chick-fil-A was the learner, which is really an amazing concept, and they've done it over and over again with different companies. So how do you create space? And so, yes, we're constantly looking at what does space do today, tomorrow, this morning, this afternoon, who's you know? Can it adapt from being an instructor led to a student led to a corporate led kind of space? Wow, and I think that there's some it's careful thought. We're not talking about space that is so dramatically different. It's just a thought process about how to support different people at different phases in the beginning, not two years down the road or 10 years down the road.
Speaker 1I love that.
Speaker 1I feel like I still am just processing all of the goodness that Fiona just said Designers need to be thinking about universities offering environments for reskilling and upskilling and goes back to that lifelong learner conversation and who is the one that is learning?
Speaker 1And then really beginning to challenge and reimagine the way that we've designed traditional classrooms to support, perhaps, the instructor-led opportunity. And what does that look like? Completely flipped, and you know, you brought this wonderful signal of how even K-12 environments can be shifted and adapted to facilitate employees and to facilitate corporate environments, and I think we're really seeing that at Kimball International. We're seeing this as well, this sort of blending of space types more than ever before, where the traditional siloed, this is an education space, this is a workspace, this is a hospitality space. All bets are off. I think at this point it's all doing this and so we continue to see this blending of spaces and, of course, echoing what we said earlier, a demand for a blend of experience, both physical and digital. We've talked a lot about the on-campus experience. Is there an opportunity, is there a nugget of wisdom here for, say, the workplace designer that's on this call or the hospitality designer that's on this call, to really begin to see and keep their eyes open to. This space may also need to be an education environment.
Speaker 4Sure, it reminds me of something that used to be a slogan in the library world, which was to think of not the library as place, but every place is a library, so that you don't have to Learning everywhere all at once place is a library, so that you don't have to be learning everywhere all at once.
Speaker 4Exactly exactly, To quote the excellent movie title, and I think that's something that we have to think about as instructional designers, as spatial designers and learning environment designers. This plays out when you think about punitively non-academic spaces at a campus, for example, or thinking about designing a business or a nonprofit or a government office, but how do you make that space amenable to learning? And this is something which really, we have all kinds of ways of doing this. Again, the field of instructional design is really great about this. I think one thing we should also think about in all these spaces is perhaps at long last starting maybe in 2025, we may finally start to see the spatial impacts of the combination of augmented and virtual reality.
Speaker 4We've been working on this since the 1990s, but it may be that Apple is doing its magic and that the now insanely expensive Vision Pro will actually trickle down as and the usual Apple matter. They'll drop prices gradually, competitors will appear which will charge less money for it, and we may see more and more implementations of this, which does change spaces. I mean, for example, if someone is completely immersed in such a headset, they may need less in the way of interesting space, because they can provide all that digitally, but also if they're actually moving, if they're moving about using this, then you have to think about designing enough room. Anybody who has played with a Wii, for example, or an Oculus Rift knows that you need to have a physical space cleared out so that you don't crack your knee on tables or fall over a chair, but also that you get to integrate that physical environment into the digital environment.
Speaker 2That's what's so exciting about.
Speaker 4XR is that the two of these intertwine in some really interesting ways. For example, if you saw the NVIDIA chip announcement from this week, they were talking about using their chips in order to power generative AI within XR so that you can more easily create content and spaces. Well, those spaces are the ones that architects are responsible for shaping, so we really have to think harder about that combination. But then I want to leave it for Mariana and Fiona, all right all right, well, I thought that was.
Speaker 3Those are great points, brian, I mean it.
Speaker 5I think you hit it on the head yeah, I think that, yeah, that's a world that um is definitely out there. We're definitely, as designers, looking at more of that three-dimensional and virtual uh representation of our work, and how do you experience the work before it actually is built? So ours is very specific. I think that the opportunities for people to be able to travel the world without actually traveling the world is also an amazing opportunity. But back to the education within the corporate world absolutely, designers doing corporate work are probably all sitting there saying, yes, of course we're thinking about that, but even small companies should be thinking about it, and I'd say that one of the things that we've learned, even just in our own office, is that, as we said, oh well, we'll just put some technology in here.
Speaker 5Well, one of the things about education we never thought about it as an education environment, but one of the things that we do know about education environments is that sound is incredibly important and acoustics is incredibly important and so can be just as bad. Acoustics can be just as damaging as many other things as bad air quality. Yes, so good acoustics. Thinking about, when you're looking at a space, what can be this or it can be that, can it, can it? Can it, do it well. Do you want to use that space for education and so thinking through those different levels of the impact of this space and how a group of people might feel in that space? We're probably not going to put in a full-on computer lab for training, but you know, our main gathering spaces are going to get an infusion of a higher level of acoustic treatment in our next renovation.
Speaker 1Wonderful. I think that's a wonderful example for designers to lean into and consider moving forward as we continue to speak to this big word of flexibility and adaptability and what that truly means.
Speaker 1Fiona, I think you've really given us a wonderful thing to consider and what feels sometimes like a nebulous word of well, what kind of flexibility and what does adaptability mean? And, to your point, I think it's really looking at acoustics as one of the major ones. Aside from, you know other tenants as well, but I love the opportunity to really think through. If you're asking this space to do double, triple, quadruple duty go from sage on a stage to hybrid learning, to project based, to whatever it is Do you have the right acoustic treatments and the right furniture and the right storage opportunities? Brian, you mentioned the Vision Pro goggles.
Speaker 1Something we're thinking about at Kimball International is how do you store up and coming technology equipment? What does the charging look like for needing to constantly be plugged in? How is that experience changing, moving forward? All of these need to be considered when we think about moving into more. You know, flexible and adaptable learning environments and designing those today for future learners. I would love to go back to the mental health conversation, because I think that there is just so much wealth in being able to discuss how we can design campus spaces and even, you know, off-campus spaces as well. With this view in mind, you know being able to design for mental health. Fiona, you mentioned earlier in the conversation the strong opportunity for amenities on campus spaces and how that can attract future learners, but I think that there's probably a parallel between amenities that support nurture, that support well-being, that support mental health. That really could have a large conversation around. What are you seeing right now when it comes to really designing for student and, I would say, instructor to mental health?
Speaker 5health. So our whole design continuum in our office is that we design from the youngest of learners all the way through university. But at the same time we're also doing corporate work, and what we're seeing happening in the corporate world for mental health is definitely influencing how we're thinking about the education world. It wasn't very long ago where, if you were a new mother, there was not a mother's room or a wellness room, whatever terminology you choose to use and that has shifted to when you're talking about not just the instructors but also the students who have children, because again our learning population looks different. Again our learning population looks different.
Speaker 5But beyond that, where are the retreat spaces which we hear a lot about in K through 12, but how do we find space for retreat within the university? And it's a challenging issue because it doesn't. It's not owned by anybody, and so when you get into universities and education, who owns the space is the thing. So you might end up with more of these nurturing spaces, actually in the School of Business for Marianne, versus some slightly different version of it in the residential world, because their space is their retreat space. But when you get into the university, even in the student commons, different types of meeting spaces and so forth so that you can.
Speaker 5And libraries. Thank you, brian, for bringing up libraries. They are so important. They are so important, however you want to name them Learning Commons, libraries, media. They're so important as a hub for education and learning and they are one of the places that's creating the majority of these spaces that are, these retreat and study hubs that we've seen on campus. So it's spread. It definitely spread all across every type of building, but you know and I think for us that's key is it is spread across and every time we design a building, we need to be thinking about where that space is.
Speaker 3I would echo everything that Fiona said and then add comments. Like you know, spaces that build community is how do we ensure that there are social opportunities? I love the way you just described it, fiona. I'm grateful for brilliant designers for this building, because they're little courtyards outside, courtyards within the building that are private, that people escape to staff, faculty as well as students. Little pods that are much more quiet. And then there are these open areas, like we have a big open area that's just always buzzing, but that's important. That buzz is important too for the connectivity, for mental health. And then spaces like we have embedded counselors. So we have counselors Wonderful, that is not an academic advisor, that is not a career coach, that is literally someone for the mental health side. So it. But it does challenge us to think we had to figure out a better space for her office and because it takes to talk about acoustics. Right, there are a whole host of things for privacy in those spaces. So we're learning, adapting.
Speaker 4I just want to think about this idea that if you remember the TV series the Paper Chase, where you would have a professor who prided himself on hollering at students and attacking them, on weakening them, and we have that as part of academia. We have faculty who love teaching Weider classes. We have institutions whose claim to fame is how many students they deny and don't accept. I think in many ways, we're experiencing a kind of cultural shift where we're starting to welcome, supporting students and supporting them in a larger way. People talk about this as 360 degree support or wraparound services. I think, as our enrollment continues to tick down, we have a push to improve our quality.
Speaker 4And that's something where basically all hands on deck are involved, everything from food service to architects, from teaching and learning centers to student life. Have an effort to try to improve our student teaching and learning centers to student life. Have an effort to try to improve our student experience and to better support them higher education is evolving rapidly to meet the needs of a new generation of learners.
Speaker 6My name is brandy, small producer at alternative design. While there are so many amazing gold nuggets of inspiration in that conversation, we identified four major takeaways we think you should consider as a designer, influencing learning environments of the future. First, the definition of learner is expanding With advancements in technology and shifting career landscapes. Thanks to AI, lifelong learning is becoming critical. Universities must cater to an ever more diverse range of students, from degree seekers to mid-career professionals to retirees seeking enrichment. Education is no longer confined to the traditional classroom experience and we could see it embedded in our daily lives in new ways that fit our lifestyles. Designers will need to consider how these embedded learning opportunities could look within other industries like retail, hospitality, workplace and even healthcare. And here's a hint it probably won't be a large classroom, but a multi-purpose space that can be quickly adapted to meet the needs in the moment. Second, excellence and accessibility must coexist. Second, excellence and accessibility must coexist In striving to attract future learners. Using virtual platforms alongside more traditional in-person experiences can make learning more accessible, especially for the new learners we just identified. The challenge for universities is to make sure both experiences offer the same academic rigor and quality. While designers have traditionally been responsible for the physical classroom experience, we could see them increasingly consult on the design implications for hybrid learning experiences as well, that are not just physical. To meet the demands of hybrid learning environments, designers have developed expertise in the technology of hybrid learning environments. Designers have developed expertise in the technology, equipment and acoustic requirements needed to support the learning experiences of students, no matter where they're located. In the future, we could see designers needing even more expertise on how to embed technologies like AR, vr and holographics into education spaces, where layout, storage and lighting needs will be different due to these changes.
Speaker 6Third, education spaces must be multipurpose. We're seeing learning being blended into daily life more than ever before, and this is starting to change the expectation of how a space can and should support the experience. Gone are the days of learning being confined to a classroom. We're seeing major retailers embedding experiential learning offerings into their storefronts. To accommodate for this change in human behavior, environments will have to radically adapt. In the moment, flexibility will mean more than just whether a furniture solution can move, but rather can it transform a space from a cafe to a conference room, to a lecture hall in the same day.
Speaker 6This demand for learning spaces to be multi-purpose goes for off-campus spaces as well, influencing third places like cafes, coffee shops and even breweries that are magnets for personal working and learning tasks. Designers could be tasked with creating training rooms and offices with surplus space, embedding private pods into coffee shops where a lifelong student could log onto their laptop and review their coursework, or incorporating hands-on experiential learning offerings in retail stores. Finally, mental health support is essential For both students and faculty. Pressures continue to rise. This makes the integration of wellness-based amenities like outdoor courtyards, respite lounges and no-tech zones a feature designers will want to consider for their education projects.
Speaker 6Balancing more open, community-focused spaces with more private, reflection-based places can support the diverse needs of lifelong learners who don't want to be on the entire day. With the number of students who require access to behavioral therapies increasing, designers could see an increased demand for private, quiet spaces or pods that can accommodate virtual counseling sessions throughout the campus, or pods that can accommodate virtual counseling sessions throughout the campus. This conversation brought to light so many insights and practical applications for designers in higher education spaces, who have to embrace and sometimes even lead change. Attracting future learners may look like reimagining the learning experience both on and off campus, as education is increasingly folded into our daily lives. Rather than leaning into a single reality of all students returning to a full in-person classroom experience, we can lead the both-and conversations with our clients to design the rich, inclusive learning environments that leverage both digital and in-person offerings for better outcomes.
Speaker 2That's it for this episode. Special thanks to our panelists, brian, marianne and Fiona for an incredible conversation. Thanks to Brandy Small, who helped to pinch hit the sharing of the takeaways while I battle a nasty sinus infection. This episode was produced by myself, brandy Small and Andrew Reid. To watch the entire panel discussion, check out the link in our show notes. This podcast is brought to you by Kimball International.