Designing the Future: Why Hybrid Learning is Remaking University Spaces

Higher education's future is flat-out hybrid, balancing on-campus and remote learning to produce a more flexible, accessible model that's redefining how universities are run.

With flexibility now a standard, not an added bonus, students these days—the many who've grown up with hybrid school during pandemic times—are rewriting the playbook for learning spaces. Following the pandemic years, studies have indicated that there has been a diversified change in students' preferences. Gensler's 2023 Education Index also provides insight into a notable trend: as much as there is increasing demand for more on-campus, with 45% of students wanting a totally on-campus experience, most students, faculty, and staff currently want a hybrid or virtual model, which is not necessarily off-campus but from other learning environments.

In order to fulfill these contemporary needs, schools need to re-think campus design. Spacestor's downloadable guide, Designing for Education, addresses these important trends in contemporary education architecture and how universities can address these challenges head-on.

Flexibility and Personalization

It's necessary to learn about what each community has and doesn't have so as to prevent the creation of a "one-size-fits-all" environment and design spaces that support flexible and diverse patterns of engagement. Spaces for learning should be flexible, equipping students with the resources for rearranging spaces to match their unique or collective demands.

Our partnership with Birmingham City University is the ideal reflection of how flexibility can be incorporated in spaces of higher learning. We outfitted a number of Railway Carriage booths, turning the campus into an individual focus area and collaborative work space. With the capability to infuse technology, offer power supply, and personalize, these booths represent the ultimate flexible learning space that may be used for any purpose.

Personalization also plays a vital role when students are made to feel like they own the environment, say, because they are more participative and engaged. Our HotLockers are another case in point, providing secure storage that can be easily fitted into any campus environment and allocated to a student depending on their timetable. In learning environments or shared spaces, branded or personalized lockers serve to create a sense of belonging—a key component of student wellbeing.

Tech-Enabled Spaces

Technology is at the core of making hybrid learning a success, with universities making a gradual move towards adopting smart classrooms that are fitted with interactive screens, video conferencing tools, and integrated software that supports physical and remote participation. Spacestor has designed the Portals Studio to make room for this hybrid collaboration, promoting seamless integration of technology to enable group collaboration, virtual meetings, and so on.

An excellent example of this is the collaboration we undertook with the University of East London, wherein we dictated hybrid work and virtual meeting rooms. We installed our Residence Connect booths in order to create perfect hybrid meeting rooms with custom lighting, ergonomic seating, and integrated technology, enabling students to be fully immersed in physical and virtual learning spaces.

This technology-driven approach is entirely in tandem with the report of Work Design Magazine that is focused on how technology must be integrated in learning environments. By providing classrooms and learning zones with the right tools, institutions can facilitate a better learning place—whether offline or online.

Wellbeing at the Forefront

Functionality is also necessary, but we require learning environments that foster physical and mental well-being. As much as we would like to have supportive learning environments, the well-being of the whole must come first. A 2022 Wiley report concluded that "supporting students through their financial, mental, and emotional struggles can also help institutions with multiple challenges, including enrollment, retention, and engagement levels."

This new model of university design is an expression of a wider cultural transformation toward the kind of integrated wellness that sees that student success is not just about learning architecture, but also about designing spaces to nourish the body and mind.

One of the greatest challenges of hybrid learning is how to make students feel connected and part of a community despite the fact that some of their learning happens online. In Gensler's Education Engagement Index, there are a few strong data points across the association between belonging, relationships, motivation, engagement, and learning outcomes, and it is all about being observant with regard to the type of spaces in which students can build connections in terms of having a sense of belonging and being motivated.

Community is not merely learning in the same space, it's the way the space encourages interaction. Universities that organize their space to promote teamwork and social interaction, yet offer sufficient space to allow for customization, are enriching the academic experience overall.

This is an ethos practiced at the University of East London. Supported by the Railway Carriage booths that are a main motif throughout the building and the modular Bleachers seating system, providing an ideal area for collaboration meetings, socializing or just a spot for some quiet sanctuary to allow focused work. The whiteboard rear of the Railway Carriages within this complex translates to even greater freedom to create another room for interactive debate and collaboration. This considerate layout enables students to easily alternate between working in groups and independent study, promoting a community ethos and supporting a wide spectrum of learning requirements and personalities.

Since hybridity will become the defining feature of education's future, with more face-to-face interaction required, universities need to reinterpret their strategy for planning campuses