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Comfortable, Pleasant, and Maintained for Learning
9/1/2004
The entire building was decrepit and the room reflected that condition, with peeling paint and dirty windows. But since I spent much of every day in the same space, I found an overstuffed chair in a little-used lounger area and dragged it into the classroom. It became "my place" for several hours every day. I became very comfortable in that classroom, in that chair, and with my 20/20 hindsight from nearly 35 years later, I'd have to say that being comfortable and feeling at home in the space contributed greatly to those 32 credit hours of 4.0 grades.
Guess what? I ran into trouble with "maintenance." This classroom had no technology more advanced than electric lights and an overhead projector in it, so at least I didn't run afoul of IT maintenance, but the custodian just hated having that chair in that room and out of place. That was partly due to a sense of order and partly because having that particular chair in the way required changes in the daily cleaning routine. Eventually, we agreed that I would put it in the classroom for my first class of each day and then be very certain to move it back into its proper place at the end of my last class-and I finished a great semester.
In her recent book, In Sync: Environmental Behavior Research and the Design of Learning Spaces, Lennie Scott-Webber, professor and chair of the School of Interior Design at Ryerson University, writes that "Well-designed workplaces utilize solutions that integrate employees' functional needs with comfortable and pleasant surroundings."
In most current on-campus learning spaces, design-to-maintenance has dominated over both functionality and comfort. There is likely to be a stronger drive to design-to-maintenance for the heavily technology-enhanced learning spaces of our future campuses, since maintenance of all of that technology adds complexity to the more mundane maintenance needs of traditional classrooms. If I have anything to add to the discussion in Boston next week, it will be to repeatedly bring up the need for learning spaces to be comfortable and pleasant.
About the author: Terry Calhoun is Director of Communications and Publications for the Society
for College and University Planning (SCUP). You can contact him through CT's IT Trends forum by clicking here. View more articles by Terry Calhoun.
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