Campus faculty and staff are frequently called upon to provide context and advice when classroom facilities are designed and/or renovated. Several years ago, SUNY launched FLEXspace: the Flexible Learning Environments eXchange which has evolved into a respected, well-adopted community of practice and open educational resource/repository. Recently, additional investment in this community-driven portal to integrate the Learning Space Rating System (LSRS), a quantitative measure of active learning potential within learning spaces in underway, planning for FLEXspace 3.0. Following the integration of these tools, several founding members of these tools/services developed a planning pathway to assist faculty, AV/IT technologists, librarians, instructional designers and facilities planners in maximizing effectiveness of their collective recommendations when tasked with advising/planning new facilities. This presentation describes an integrated planning pathway proven successful at multiple colleges, universities and K-12 environments. The goal is to empower advisory groups with diverse perspectives and expertise to follow a step-by-step process that creates internal group alignment prior to meeting with external contractors and consultants. This alignment results from adopting and prioritizing core pedagogical values within budgetary constraints, including definition of acceptable alternatives when preferred solutions are potentially limited by resource or environmental constraints. Participants will learn how to navigate these tools, and how to adopt and guide these efforts on campus. Participants will learn about and be equipped to replicate the FLEXspace Integrated Planning Pathway (FLIPP) for campus advisory groups with diverse expertise to align on core pedagogical and technology values when planning new learning environments.

Learning Objectives:

1. To describe how a significant and complex higher education system created a grassroots solution to engage individual campuses in a new style of integrated planning. A brief description of the origins of FLEXspace will set the stage for how faculty and staff from multiple campuses came to realize common pitfalls interacting with cross-disciplinary groups on campus steeped in the culture of their primary discipline. When the Provost of a major 64- campus system charged a task group to examine how to boost effectiveness across the entire system by sharing ideas, plans and photos of learning environment renovations (and new buildings), this brief introduction will enable participants to identify with the roles of people “around the table” and recognize that this solution was a response to a very complex intersection of campus budget, politics and people. (Apx 10-15 minutes)
2. Experience how the LSRS data, including measures that support DEI and inclusion, provides a priority baseline which can be refined with campus data, and how to begin peer benchmarking within the FLEXspace environment. This experience will enable replication of the process on campus. Participants will first view a use-case simulation, then use laptops or other devices to access two freely available tools (LSRS and FLEXspace) to navigate and experience use of these two highly available tools, free to educational users. This will also involve a series of “hands in the air” polling to examine how audience members manage current processes, and how additional enrollment and user feedback data can specifically inform the FLEXspace Integrated Planning Pathway (FLIPP) (Apx. 1/2 hour)
3. Leveraging the qualitative elements from lived experience of advisory participants to inform the design process. Each participant in the visioning process brings unique experience to the table – be it discipline based (faculty from a variety of disciplines) or education and practice (architects, facilities planners, information technologists) or academic support professionals (instructional designers, librarians, academic technologists). Given the challenge of budget realities, these participants naturally feel competitive about influencing the design direction based on their individual professional background. Following the first two learning objective outcomes, the third introduces the “human element” where we demonstrate how powerful evidence is coming into focus that competitiveness takes a back seat to “technology in service of pedagogy” in advisory meetings through use of FLEXspace coupled to other tools and processes uploaded by the community of practice members, and assessing the effectiveness of the environment from the perspective of student experience. (Apx. 20 mins)
4. How post-occupancy sharing enables participants to connect with a broader community. The result of FLIPP enables people to contribute detailed records to inform peers and aspirant institutions to learn and build upon a successful project. This also enables sharing from specific roles how this iterative process can be replicated regardless of the size or Carnegie classification of the institution. The FLIPP process can also be applied to any educational process within non-profits, museums and K-12 environments, and ultimately will help sustain colleague communities and professional organizations by growing a collection that is not connected to any one specific commercial interest. (Apx 10-15 mins) followed by Q&A