Overview

Contact Information

Request Service

About Us

Office of Information Technology (OIT) > Research and Evaluation Services > Selected Research > Learning Environments Research

Learning Environments Research

During the past few years at the University of Minnesota, we have seen innovation, growth, and advancements on campus in the form of Active Learning Classrooms, a new Science Teaching and Student Services building, the SMART learning commons, and newly-designed student study spaces and lounges. OIT's Research and Evaluation team has partnered with faculty and staff from across the U of M to conduct systematic research on these spaces, centered on the question: To what extent do formal and informal learning environments shape teaching and learning?

Early pilot research, funded by the Archibald Bush Foundation and conducted in collaboration with the Office of Classroom Management, showed that:

faculty teaching in new learning spaces and students learning in them both had strongly positive attitudes toward the spaces at the end of the term;
faculty thought the overall relationship they had with their students deepened;
students had the sense that their professors were closer and more accessible to them than in traditional classrooms.

Read more about the pilot research at Transform--SoTL at the University of Minnesota.

Later, more formal research combined quantitative and qualitative research designs and data collection methods to study both formal and informal learning spaces. Research on the formal learning environments involved course grade data as well as data collected using a class observation form, a student survey, an instructor interview, and student focus groups. The informal environments research used data gathered by means of student focus groups, student assignment logs, and photo surveys.

This investigation has yielded the following findings:

students in our new, technology-enhanced learning spaces exceeded final grade expectations relative to their ACT scores, suggesting strongly that features of the spaces contributed significantly to their learning;
first-year and sophomore students as well as students from metropolitan areas rated our new learning spaces significantly higher than their upper-division and rural counterparts in terms of engagement, enrichment, effectiveness, flexibility, fit and instructor use;
different learning environments affect teaching-learning activities even when instructors attempt to hold these activities constant;
in their choices of informal study spaces, students fall into routines early and are reluctant to deviate from them even if they are not meeting their study goals;and
assignment types greatly impact the study environments students select.

Read more about the formal research at Making the Case for Space: Three Years of Empirical Research on Learning Environments (PDF).

We are currently editing a volume of New Directions for Teaching and Learning Volume 137 (2014) that will explore the history, current research and best teaching practices in active learning spaces.

For researchers: our learning space data collection instruments are available free of charge to members of the academic community who wish to use them, in whole or in part, in their own research. Please simply email J.D. Walker to let us know about your plans, and please give credit in an appropriate place in your work to the Research & Evaluation Team, OIT, University of Minnesota.