South Devon College, Learning Resource Centre, Paignton

Background & Context

The College wanted to redevelop itself as an IT and ILT based College. It had a lot of old buildings, some of which were structurally unsound, so it took the opportunity to sell the original site for housing development and move to an empty factory site.

The College has moved from several buildings into one and has downsized its footprint whilst increasing student numbers. It downsized from 28,000 square metres to 23,000 square metres. FTE growth was achieved in 2002/03 from under 3,000 to over 4,000 in 2006/07.

The development has significantly increased the profile of the College and furthered its relationship with its local communities and local businesses who make use of the innovation centre development (joint venture with the local council) and superb training and other facilities.

The College is a medium sized general FE college running programmes from introductory to higher education levels across all disciplines in creative industries, business and general education, care and learning opportunities and technology. The main College is on two levels.

Included on both levels is the open plan Learning Resource Centre with an interconnecting spiral staircase. Each floor is designed to support different curriculum areas and both contain a wide range of books, journals and DVDs to support learning and a total of 90 PCs. The Skills Centre staff will be based within the Learning Resource Centres and this will provide students with an additional support service. Higher education students have access to their own suite of 20 computers.

There are also 6 open access PC zones called Open Access Learning Centres which are self managed by departments. Each zone has up to 20 computers. These PC zones utilise the latest teaching technology including wireless laptops, digital projection and interactive whiteboards.

The design puts the LRC at the centre of the building. They wanted people to feel like it was not too far to go and to have somewhere that had 'flow' so that you could walk in and clearly see everything set out in front of you. It was designed so that people aren't walking through the middle of a class or group of students so they feel free to walk around spend time perusing the resources. The books are around the outside of the area and the PCs in the middle to give clean lines. The space is designed to be used flexibly and will be configured differently at exam time. The College used the move as an opportunity to get rid of lots of old material so that the College would be fresh and new and more relevant for its students. Visibility of learning was a key principle in designing the building.

The LRC is basically a Library where students can borrow books and other resources like journals and use 90 open access PCs. Staff are allowed to book some of the PCs so they can bring in a group to use the resource space.

The PCs are located on circular pods. Each pod takes 8 PCs but a decision was made to have some pods with only 4 or 6 PCs to allow plenty of space and allow for people in the same group using laptops.

There is a journals pod with comfortable seating and staff sometimes work with small groups in this area.

There is a policy across the whole of the College whereby students and staff are only allowed to eat in designated zones. Bottles of water are allowed in the LRC provided students either keep them in their bags or on the floor.

The centres are fully staffed by Learning Centre Assistants who can help in finding resources and accessing the computers. The close integration with the teaching staff ensures we provide students with a comprehensive selection of books and modern, up to date learning resources.