University of Gloucestershire, Centre for Active Learning (CeAL) CETL, Cheltenham

Background & Context

The whole building was underpinned by a particular pedagogic philosophy. The CETL wanted a building which fostered active styles of learning with some ICT support, in particular collaborative styles of learning with the students and the tutor learning together and groups of students learning together. The Higher Education Funding Council produced a booklet called Social Learning Spaces and this concept started to be termed 'Social Learning' i.e. students learning in a rather more informal style.

Where other projects may have been centrally driven by Library Services or equivalent, the CETL planning came principally out of an academic department, the School of Environment.

There are many principles behind the pedagogy including flexibility, collaboration and international contacts.

The main pedagogic principles are about active styles of learning, collaboration between staff and students and between students and students, and increasingly amongst staff.

Pedagogic excellence and experimentation are the initial principles, these being the focus of Centres of Excellence in Teaching and Learning. It is an exploration, an experimentation with teaching, spreading and facilitating good practice that was already there.

There are a number of additional elements in the background. The University has had an explicit commitment to sustainable development since the early 1990s and all new buildings have been designed to very high environmental standards in terms of energy efficiency, water use, heating, lighting and cooling, that kind of thing. There are very high levels of insulation and mostly part-passive ventilation. There is some forced ventilation in the building as it is often inconvenient to open some windows due to local road noises. There is no air conditioning in the building; warm and cool air is circulated and the building is 'intelligent' in that it monitors room temperatures, adjusting accordingly. The building uses part natural materials using local stone from the Cotswolds, wood from sustainable sources, there is also glass and steel inside. The copper cladding on the outside is part-recycled and is being evaluated for BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) currently. University landscaping students are involved in developing the grounds including the use of plants that will be used for teaching in Biology. The students have also been putting up bird, bat and bee boxes. Those are important on sustainability grounds and the fact that the students are deciding on the locations is part of their active learning. The students get up ladders with hammers!

The former School of Environment, which is the area from which the CETL grew, had quite a track record in writing good practice guidance for HEFCE about how to support disabled students in their studies and this was guidance was followed in the planning stages. Disabled users and potential users were consulted and the building was designed to be very accessible (including automatic doors throughout) to mobility impaired, blind and deaf students for instance.

The Centre for Active Learning building is wireless networked, multi-purposed and themed on each floor. Designed on three levels, the building advertises tolerance to food, drink and mobile phone use.

The ground floor is very informal. This is an open drop-in space with a variety of comfortable furniture styles for group work and with some standing access at 12 computers for quick access to email and the web plus 6 desktop PCs designed for group activity. There are spaces with higher level tables and plasma screens. Vending machines supply hot and cold drinks and snacks. The first floor is similar in its design and use of comfortable furnishings and can be used for drop-in sessions but can also be configured into a classroom. There are offices for post graduate students involved in research into this approach to teaching and learning. This space is also shared with an audio typist assisting with research work, and with visiting scholars.

The top floor becomes more formal again; it is in boardroom format with a large oval table for use by classes for student presentations, employer or professional body visits and video conferencing.

The whole campus is Grade II listed and so there were restrictions particularly relating to the external appearance of any new buildings. It is a High Victorian 'Gothic' Cotswold limestone, ivy-clad, quadrangled campus so care had to be taken in relation to applications for planning permission. Local planners need to agree, and there was a consultation exercise where other peoples' opinions were sought. The new building sits on the footprint of a now-demolished flat roofed 1960's annexe. The planners said they were not keen on a pastiche of the existing historic buildings, but they wanted something that was sympathetic to the existing structures and existing mature trees. The new building is built partly of the same materials, with mimicking shapes (steeply pitched roof, 'towers') but part of it is constructed in new materials. The ground floor is locally-sourced Cotswold limestone, and the top two floors are clad in pre-patinated copper - it is quite striking.

Also, the University of Gloucestershire is highly committed to sustainability and sustainable development and so this is an extremely environmentally-friendly and sustainable building in its materials and energy use.

Originally it was used solely by staff and students in the School of Environment but now it is extending out across the other Departments in the Faculty.

On the ground floor students can work informally individually or in groups and on more formal project work.

On the first floor there can be classes which move between lecture format and students working in groups as part of the class, e.g. typically a lecture could consist of students sitting in armchairs or on sofas taking notes by hand or laptop and then the tutor may direct some to be engaged in project work and then reporting back at the end of class. The students will then use the IT equipment and work in groups, gathering information and then constructing a presentation or a set of notes. The IT equipment is designed so that the tutor can pull information from the screens that the students have been using on to a central screen for discussion.

Groups of staff are using the building informally as well as the students. The top floor is typically used for seminars or presentations lead by either staff or students, for discussions with the group physically in the class or between students at the University or indeed with students or tutors at another University in the UK or abroad.

Two office spaces are located on the top floor. One is for the CeAL Academic Manager, the other one for the learning technologist. There is also a small kitchenette, which allows the top floor to be used for small external events.