Welcome to the Liverpool Hope Learning Lab.
The Learning Lab is a space for active learning and facilitates opportunities for students to achieve targeted goals through group collaboration, scaffolded activities, research-based strategies and, of course, the use of specific relevant based Educational Technology.
The Learning Lab supports small to medium-sized seminar and tutorial groups that can work student-to-student, or student-to-tutor with digital content at individual tables wirelessly connected to a single large group screen. This content can then be simultaneously duplicated onto 7 x large screens spread around the room, allowing a more collective discussion or open debate.
The Learning Lab is designed to promote Active Learning so that students can be engaged with comfortably participating in real-time quizzes, instant ad hoc questions, and a wide range of collaborative activities / tasks. As the tutors can globally see exactly what is being produced by the groups the tutors can then make informed decisions about what needs to be incorporated, and how it can benefit a range of diverse students.
Liverpool Hope is dedicated to developing learning environments that generate improved academic outcomes and help develop skills that prepare students for a world of work and lifelong learning beyond graduation.
Please contact our Educational Technologist, Dave Aldridge, at aldridd@hope.ac.uk, to see how the Lab might be used for your seminars or tutorials..
Housed in the rooms equipment cabinet are a good selection of Macbooks, iPads and Windows laptops all with the latest operating systems installed on them.
The learning lab is also a BYOD facility which enables staff and students to bring their own devices into the space and connect them to any of the large screens incorporated in the room.
If you have never used the Learning Lab before, now might be a good time to try.
Training (full training for staff new to the Learning Lab, and refresher sessions) is provided by our Educational Technology, David Aldridge. Please contact Dave to book a session at aldridd@hope.ac.uk.
Any tutor interested in booking the Learning Lab for group collaboration work needs to contact the Learning & Teaching team at learningandteaching@hope.ac.uk with their attached Booking Form.
The space is designed for two or three hour sessions of student-centred, active learning and is equipped with a variety of hardware and software to facilitate this, perfect for seminar activity and promoting student engagement. The space is not designed for lectures.
If you have any questions regarding the Learning Lab, please contact Dave Aldridge at aldridd@hope.ac.uk or email learningandteaching@hope.ac.uk.
The creative use of both new and old technology within a space such as the Learning Lab opens up the potential for a wealth of exciting new pedagogical approaches. By utilising the communicative pathways that the new technology offers, we have a learning space for innovation and creativity both for the students but also for the staff at Hope.
Innovation can be thought of as an emergent property of a complex system (Goldstein, 2010). In order to create valuable and novel ideas, one must create spaces where new innovations can 'emerge' from complexity. These sites of emergence are best produced in spaces “where individuals can express their creativity, explore new ways of thinking and and new ideas through the collision of the unfamiliar” (Fleming and Lynch, 2005). By creating a space where a diverse range of stakeholders can interact dialogically, connect and research the outside world and simultaneously share these ideas with a large number of people, we have the potential to create an environment that can support the higher order thinking necessary to stretch our students with academic challenge and provide a space for innovation and creativity.
As well as being ideal for innovation, the Learning Lab provides a rich ground for generating new and exciting Active Learning-oriented pedagogies. Active Learning is now seen as vital pedagogical tool for maximising performance in the classroom (Freeman et al, 2013) and fostering academic persistence in higher education environments (Kuh, 2008).
As Universities focus on openness, flexibility, and collaboration, they are redesigning classrooms to match. Read more
Using technology in the Learning Lab can do one or more of the following for students:
- Improve differentiation = Tailoring instruction to meet individual needs. Noun meaning action or process
- Develop specific student skills = The ability to carry out tasks with determined results
- Make boring content more engaging
- Make difficult content easier to understand
- Improve student metacognition/self-awareness = promotes the strengthening of individual personalities.
Students like to work together on Problem-Based Learning activities, to collaborate and find the answers to challenging questions/scenarios. Active Learning helps students to build effective teamwork and communication/negotiation skills, as well as patience.
