Participatory approaches for designing technology-enhanced learning spaces: The experience of redesigning the 'Cube‘ and the 'Poppy‘

This paper presents an exploratory research that aims to identify students‘ and academics‘ perceptions of the future of technology-enhanced learning spaces and how they would design these spaces if given such opportunity. Findings from design 'sandpits‘ will be presented wherein twenty-five students and thirty-two teachers discussed, critique and redesigned two prototypes of a large learning space (the 'Cube‘) and a small learning space (the 'Poppy‘). Both these prototypes were designed aiming to introduce technology as a paramount feature intending to provoke reflections and discussions about the role of technology and how it links with pedagogy and space. This researched was framed by the method of Participatory Design. Participatory Design is a hybrid method of design that learns from different research methods using a set of practices aiming to include end-users as active participants in the design process. Through Participatory Design sessions participants reflected on the role of technology in face-to-face learning and teaching and provided insights into how to embed technology effectively.