Campus space in higher education as a place for learning

Traditionally on-campus education often is associated with lecture thea- tres and tutorial rooms, and the physical room as such is often taken- as-given. But what kind of campus space does higher education offer students? And how can we understand space becoming a place for learning? What kind of rooms do the students meet and how are they designed? How are students and teacher interacting using resources afforded by the room? In my research I am interested in the interplay between space, interaction and learning, and the presentation will relate those aspects to a design oriented perspective called Designs for Learning; a perspective that offers an approach to understand space in relation to the concept of design. Thus – in relation to space – designs for learning helps us to understand how space, as a part of the setting, constitutes an essential element in communication. For example, spatial arrangements in a room, like furniture and lightning, could be resources in meaning-making processes. In this presentation I also discuss how space becomes a part of designs in learning. With the notion designs in learning one could understand space as a resource in the meaning ma- king process; as a learner designs his or her way, choosing apt resources to transform her understanding into new representations. My argument here is that a room and its resources plays an important part in these processes