Physical and Virtual Learning Spaces in Higher Education : Concepts for the Modern Learning Environment

Higher education is facing a renaissance in terms of its approaches to teaching and learning and the use of physical and virtual spaces. Physical and Virtual Learning Spaces in Higher Education: Concepts for the Modern Learning Environment documents real-world experiences of innovators in higher education who have redesigned spaces for learning and teaching. The redefined spaces encompass a broader range of physical, virtual, formal, informal, blended, flexible, and time sensitive factors.

Professor Mike Keppell is currently Director, The Flexible Learning Institute and Professor of Higher Education at Charles Sturt University, Australia. Prior to this, he worked from 2003 - 2007 at the Hong Kong Institute of Education as Associate Professor and Head of the Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology (LTTC). Before this, he was Head of the Biomedical Multimedia Unit, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Science, The University of Melbourne, Australia from 1998 - 2002 and Head of the Interactive Multimedia Unit, Division of Distance and Continuing Education, Central Queensland University, Australia from 1994 - 1998. He has a background in learning and teaching, curriculum, evaluation and more specifically, instructional design. His research focuses on blended learning, learning oriented assessment, authentic learning, learning spaces and transformative learning using design based research. He is currently President of ascilite. In 2007 he edited a book through IGI Global titled Instructional Design: Case Studies in Communities of Practice with authors from eight different countries.

Associate Professor Kay Souter is Associate Dean (Academic) at La Trobe University, in Melbourne Australia. She is the leader of the 'Spaces for Knowledge Generation project' and has been associated with several other major pedagogical research projects. She teaches and researches mostly in the areas of psychoanalytic literary theory and the representations of the female body and has published widely in these areas. She is currently working on collaborative research projects with colleagues in Melbourne and Delhi, including an anthology of mother-daughter relationships in Indian literature, An Endless Winter's Night anthology of Mother-Daughter relationships in Indian Literature, with Ira Raja (New Delhi, Women Unlimited Press, 2010).

Matthew Riddle is a Senior Lecturer in Academic Development in the Faculty of Law and Management at La Trobe University, Australia. He has been working in the field of tertiary education since 1993. He has worked as an educational researcher at the University of Cambridge and educational designer at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is interested in a broad range of higher education issues, particularly in virtual and physical learning spaces, curriculum design and e-learning and has designed innovative online role-plays. His research uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods in order to build a rich evidence base about student perspectives on daily technology use in the context of their broader learning experience. This research is attempting to change the way we think about learning spaces by examining what students do with their time, where they go and how they feel about learning spaces.