 and welcome everybody to this early afternoon session, always seems funny saying that before I've eaten lunch, which is titled the art of placemaking for online learning. And we have two speakers or leaders for the session today, both from the University College of Estate Management. We have Kate Lindsay and James Ritzen, and there will be a little interactive segment that they're going to include this morning, but do add your questions and comments into the comments section as we go along. Over to you Kate and James. Thank you Helen, and thank you to everyone who is attending our session today. Over the next 20 minutes or so we are going to have a conversation about placemaking and the parallels and differences between doing that online and physically in a space such as an urban setting. Now this is the type of conversation that myself and James have as we work together to design and develop and teach fully online courses. I am ahead of digital education with a focus on digital pedagogy and learning design, and Dr. James Ritzen is a program leader in building surveying with a specialism in old buildings and sustainable development. We work for the University College of Estate Management or UCIM, whose core purpose is to provide accessible, relevant and cost effective post-grad and undergrad degree and apprenticeship programs, enabling students to enhance careers, increase professionalism, and contribute to a better built environment, in particular the journey towards net zero. Now there is a slight irony, whilst our subject area is the physical world, our programs or study are run entirely online, and this is in response to who our students are and the high degree of flexibility that they require to participate in higher education. At any one time we have more than 4,200 students studying on our programs from around the world with us, 96% of our students study part-time and 68% of our students are in employment, many are in full-time employment, and 94% of our students are mature students in the average age of 30. When I joined UCIM nearly three years ago it was quickly apparent how similar the terminology of learning design and making courses was to that of making buildings. You begin with a vision of how you want a course to be, this may be a complete new build, a remodel, or a retrofit of course components, bringing in new materials, technologies and designs to address changing requirements of the users. In our production cycle we have a design phase, a development phase, a build phase, and put scaffolding in place to support our students' journey. We make the best use of technologies to enable the best experience, we provide options of fixtures and fittings such as a variety of ways to provide feedback or to discuss and exchange and collaborate, and every module we make has a running snag list of things to fix or enhance. Our learning designs, VLE sites, curriculum are all developed to meet quality standards and regulations. We create great online architecture. So why do so many students who study online find it so challenging and isolating, even when we are developing to the highest quality standards? What is it that can turn our spaces into places and drive that emotional connection and sense of community? I'm going to invite James to come into this conversation now and tell us a bit about what placemaking actually is. Thank you Kate. Now architects have always been great at creating buildings, but the common criticism is they're not great at creating spaces. The spaces in between the buildings are key to creating the sense of place, a sense of belonging, the genus loci of an area. These spaces, or sometimes referred to as even voids on a map, may be the most difficult to quantify, but they actually matter the most, the streetscape, the urban square, the parkland, they are actually how we get from building to building, they are actually how we inhabit a city. So actually they matter the most when people want to gather and build and experience a community and there are steps available to help us develop that sense of place. Now here there are lots of different principles available on placemaking, these aren't the set ones, but I think these are the ones that actually have the most applicability to what we are using today. Now they are the American standards for placemaking and the first principle is that the community is the expert. Now this is something that takes a lot of difficulty for a lot of people to actually get their head around. They may think that they want to teach something that way, but if your students or something is doing that then actually they are the expert and it's exactly the same when we're dealing with an urban landscape. So we can as urban designers and areas that I deal with, particularly with the historic environment, we can put in new urban squares. If people want to make the most direct route through a space then they will do and if that means creating their own pathways through your lovely garden then they will do. So actually it's really important to understand that the community is the leader in this process. You're creating a space not a design and I think that is a really important one. You can have frameworks and you can have templates to work to, but you have to deal with each individual area as a unique entity and that means that you may have to break some of the rules or take some of the principles out that you want to do so you may want to have a barrier-free environment, but obviously that's not particularly applicable if you're designing a playground near a busy road. So again it's about creating the space and to be flexible about it. The third one and one that I totally agree with and in sense totally embrace and particularly in what we're talking about today, you can't do it alone. It is a collaborative event. It is not something where an architect will sit down at a drawing board and dictate a design. It's something that you have to do with the community, you have to do with experts, you have to work together to achieve. They will always say on principle four it can't be done or it's not worth doing or anything of the same. Negativity will be there from the start in place making, but it can. Okay we're going to show you how you can do it online and I've been involved in it in the physical world as well where we've been creating spaces where I said oh what's the point okay there's no advantage in doing that and the impact has been huge. When you start the process you can learn a lot just by observing. Okay actually understanding the space is absolutely key. In my topic when I'm dealing with sustainability the first thing I do is accurately record the spaces I'm working in. Okay you need to know where you're working, you need to observe, you need to know what people are doing, how they're doing it and why they're doing it. That is what is so important and that can help you develop a vision of what the space or the place you're trying to create is and from that you develop a form that supports the function of what you're trying to develop. Okay that is absolutely key to what you are doing. You are developing something, it is part of your vision, it is part of the place that you are creating and it has to come from its function. Okay a place will not work if its function does not work and eight is probably one of the most important things you can do to triangulate a space. Okay a very simple typical example of this you may install a coffee shop and then you may want to think about some seating so people can enjoy a coffee but then you must think about things like a litter bin, a table and other things that they would want to do and that triangulation of space is really important. What multiple things do you need for that space to succeed? Okay because if you don't have the litter bin the serviettes and disposable cups will be left on the floor okay and the litter will grow and the place will look scrubby and people won't come so that triangulation and purpose is really really key to place making. Now the ninth one is one that we often hear about and we hear about it many different terms and you will see it so you often say start with the low hanging fruit or the easy wins. Chicago where we've taken this principles from use the vision start with flowers okay start by easy wins to brighten up the place to make it place more inviting that's what you're trying to do and sometimes just cosmetic changes can make a huge difference. The amount of times I've been working with urban designs and a simple clean up tidy up cutting the grass impact that has on the space is huge and particularly things like the cleaning and tidying the removing of graffiti or actually the highlighting or celebrating of the graffiti can be have a huge impact okay nobody wants to be in a space that looks grubby dangerous badly lit and so forth so start with the easy things first and following on from that money is rarely the issue. Jamie Lerner one of the great urban designers in in South America would always say give me a budget and I'll take a zero off it and see what I can do with it and he would often end up creating these amazing and wonderful spaces that will totally change and regenerate an entire neighborhood okay so it's actually how we use the money which is the key and 11 you are never finished and that goes with the first principles there you develop a vision that you observe you the community is the expert and as as from that our communities change our environments change our needs change and never more so in the last 18 to 24 months have our requirements in the urban environment changed so much so it is a constantly evolving thing and that is how we start creating successful places thank you Kate. Okay so in terms of how we design online I'm going to address the first six of those placement king principles in one chunk now as a sector over the past coming up to two years we have heard many negative statements on the quality of online education although I would argue that much of what we have had to do as emergency remote teaching is not what we would do if we had the time and the resource to create digital first online learning experiences everybody did their very best they did more than their very best but it was never going to be good enough especially for those who did not choose to learn or to teach online online learning though is an excellent way to learn and it works every one of our students who is with us every one of the students who are with other online providers such as the OU are testament to that they achieve their goals and their dreams and our student satisfaction schools are excellent many of our students study with us because traditional routes to higher education are just not suitable and are not available to them we're providing education to students who are time poor goal orientated and for many to be blunt want to get in work to their own timetable get their assessment done and get out providing the level of flexibility that our students needs create instant challenges in terms of place making our high flex challenge being a fully online institution is not the battle of online physical it is giving students opportunities to engage synchronously asynchronously or not at all with other people many want direct pathways through rather than to loiter in spaces but at the same time there is still this need and desire to develop a sense of community and we know that students will build their skills better if they learn together those coffee shop moments aren't going to look the same online for our students and for similar reasons it is challenging to engage students in the process of course design or enhancement as it is on top of what they're already doing which is often working full-time caring for dependents and also studying our approach at UCM is to ensure that we bring together everyone who has touch points with students and expertise in digital pedagogy into the design of our modules academic staff academic support tutors learning designers developers librarians accessibility and well-being officers if students are available to work with us we really do embrace that and we bring them in but it is challenging as I said so we do a lot of observing and we continually adapt our provision from what we learn via patterns and student data and engagement now module KPIs and learning analytics play a part in that but also weekly student feedback on modules end of module evaluations we have student reps who work with us and gather feedback from their communities and we also do things like designing learning activities into the curriculum which actually enable us to learn more about our students for instance engaging them in discussion about what digital technologies they use and how they do it and sharing that with us so we can learn more about adapting our provision for them and our students do not have to do it alone whilst we have a core educational model for curriculum design it is the design and provision of care the services the support the scaffolding enabling retakes resubmissions interruptions of studies all these things that enable our students to progress these are just as important and just as resource-intensive as making and delivering courses so actually if you look at the initial storyboard for one of our modules in the top left here you can see it actually looks quite like an urban plan each block or say a building contains rooms which are learning activities assessments resources the principle of triangulation is incredibly important to our students and one that we have implemented across our provision online it translates to seamless navigation sequence steps consistent student instructions and ensuring that students have access to everything they need right there as well as adding an elements of tangibility that we so often miss online indicators on how long something will take to do how long something will take to read when you can't hold the actual physical book in your hands you need other indicators for this how long something will take to watch and signpost to support services but it is the places in between that are the tricky bits to circumnavinate that third space what are the plaza plazas the avenues and sidewalks of online learning where community can come together to share to exchange to make rather than leave these open for interpretation we do take an approach of designing in more directed and structured spaces small gaps each week where students can share and discuss tying this closely to the assignment encourages greater partition for our goal orientated students to create that learning community one approach we took with our digital technologies module was to make engagement in community spaces such as tablets and forums and special webinar events part of the module assessment we know our students are goal orientated they want to get their assessments so to encourage them to engage in the community and develop their skills that way we made that engagement part of the assessment and we asked them to provide examples of how they demonstrated digital literacies in that final assessment so many students really like this because they were learning as they went along and they could just screenshot their engagements and submit those as part of their assignments at the end is quite easy marks and this was very enthusiastically by many but actually those who wanted to do the bare minimum and wanted the choice of not having the time to engage with other people it was not a positive experience and finding the balance between that community and flexibility is something that we are going to be reworking for a long time I think and trying to get right um James I've put an example of one of your modules on here as well the analysis and adaptation of buildings at level seven can you just talk about how you about community around the assignment and that yeah so here the students were asked to write a journal article about a particular building particularly about its history and the challenges it faces in the future so very early on we've asked them to go and choose a building and here we asked them to upload a photograph and we asked them to upload their best photograph and then they were asked to comment on each other's images and then at the end of the week we actually gave them 10 days after the activity was given we actually had a professional photographer came in and he went through the photographs gave feedback and told them how they can improve it so that the students could then go back either take the photographs improve them edit them and so forth and it gave them that kind of experience that you would have if you were working for a publisher they were saying maybe the photograph would be better um you know or might be a wider photograph you might need a wider scan or something like that and it was actually a really and we did this through and the students really enjoyed it and then we gave the um the photographer chose the best marks and the lead tutor chose that sorry the best photograph the lead tutor chose the best photograph and i and module leader chose the best first photograph and they all received online badges so it was this kind of very collaborative way and the students really enjoyed that as well as it being a learning experience it felt that they were part of a process leading towards that assignment. Thanks Jane yeah we've got a few minutes left before the Q&A so what we'd like to do really is to gather your ideas a link to a mural board has just been posted in the comments section thank you very much um and we'd like you to go here and have a think and share some ideas i'll just get a picture up on the screen i won't share the mural screen because that just always makes everything too complicated when people are looking at it and at the same time okay so the image you would see is an urban space and this is going to represent our digital course look at the features what would they represent online are they things that you that would support place making or not what could you put here to make it more appealing let's start with the flowers what can we add there to make it a better space to be we have really little time today but we do want to capture some of your thoughts maybe some things worked over emergency remote teaching that you saw that you think could start creating these spaces in between for us um and if we can just spend a few minutes on this mural board i'll play some plinky clonky music in the background just as it's in the mood let's hope it'll work have two minutes on this please everyone keep annotating that but i'm aware that we just have a few minutes for questions now i think um is that right emma yes that's right yes um would you like to start the questions i'll add in yeah yeah let's let's we do have a final slide but i think questions are always better hi um so we've had a couple of questions that have come through in the comments emma perhaps can put these up on the screen for us so first from alison christie and she's asking how does placemaker differ from sticky campus if you know what sticky campus means yeah i think um we have so placemaking is we have students who spend a lot of time on on our v le and on our courses um they enjoy the learning activities they diligently read watch participate on their own in those but they don't still don't necessarily feel sense community as part of that so i think placemaking is very much about having an emotional attachment and a sense of community where sticky campus i think that it depends i define it there are elements of that i think there are elements of emotional attachment to sticky campus but in my mind i've seen to these the sticky campus is someone who's on campus a lot to do various tasks you don't have to be so resident emotionally there thank you kate um and next question is from sheila mcneill um which is how can we ensure that students are effectively involved in placemaking some of our online spaces are very difficult to add flowers to um as i said the issues that we have is we are students we design for who our students are not the students that may be existent in other university settings that my previous institution we had a lot of student engagement in um the design of online spaces and courses and things like that because they could walk into a building and we could put a sign on the door saying pizza for anyone who wants to come in and get involved and you said we can't do any of that and our students are all all fully online so we need to find other ways to effectively involve students which is as effective for them in terms of time as possible so we have we have a student rec scheme our student rec gather feedback from other students and they sit on our committees and and feed that up we have a student ambassador scheme so we have students that represent certain key topics such as sustainability and diversity and inclusion um and we do put invites out for students to join us but we have actually have no opportunities for face-to-face contact other than graduation which interestingly we had this weekend and it it's brilliant to have all the students in redding town hall and proceeding through the town centre um so i think effectively involving students doesn't necessarily mean getting them in a room at the same time it means really understanding who your students are listening to them listening through the ways they do engage with the institution be that module feedback or endorsements or even complaints thank you and also can i just say you know when we say add flowers and i think that things like it's i mean one of the big ones is how easy is it to navigate how easy is it to to get through um frustration online i think is a common thread and i think you know we listened to the keynote earlier and security and and other issues and things like that and navigatability these are all things that we we exist in the urban environment okay and i think actually sometimes um making a space just cleaner tidier uh and and navigatable but also i we always have this thing well would you want to be in there would you want to do that and we always have this discussion like you know the question i ask k is we put a week together on online learning and said would you want to go and do that k would you want to go and learn about that topic have i made it so that you would want to do it and that's actually creating the place so sometimes it's just about oh you know we have this you know gentrification big theme going on in urban design at the moment it's it is different to that it's about making somewhere feel that and also um that flexibility as k mentioned some students just want to go straight to the assignment what's the core reading i need to take the box and get on with it other students are just really fascinated by the topic they want further reading and things like that have you provided for both of those students so sometimes it is just it's almost tidying up it's an awful thing you know i can just hear my old mother just saying you know having tidied your room it will look better and i think that at sometimes in the urban environment just you know a tidy up of the space is really good and i think it also works well in the online environment a clean and tidy space or somewhere wanting to but also somewhere that's flexible is actually really a good point to start on that thanks for those reflections jane so i think they're echoed in some of the comments um you said you had a final slide so i'll invite you to share that now there you go james would you like to speak to this okay yep so i suppose the question that we now ask ourselves at UCM and particularly now that we're going through module redesigns is to also say is to ask ourselves the question how do we create the coffee shop moments of online learning so we know that students actually don't just learn from the activities they learn from each other they ask questions to each other and how do we create that and from place making we've asked ourselves these questions when we develop the modules is it fit for purpose is it understandable is it easy to navigate is it accessible and that's you know obviously a core requirement now but actually it's also a desirability in both buildings and online is it the right design for the user and in the particular the type of user that will do it do we have that balance of control and flexibility is it a healthy environment and most of all is it somewhere that we would want to be and it goes back to that final question that you know me and Kate or any of the development team always says you know would I want to do this week if I was a student would I want to do that and I think that's a really good way of taking some of the place making principles and doing that would you want to be in that urban environment yes and it's be the same then you're virtually all the way there if you would want to be in that environment and it's again it's the same what we're doing online so I think we'll probably leave with that question for everyone is how do we begin to create those coffee shop moments of creating a place like we're doing online learning thank you very much and if and if you take a note of our blog there we will be writing up this session sharing our slides and posting a write-up of the mural board on that so you check that out in a week's time also so it just remains for me to thank you both again James and Kate for a really interesting session and then a fun little activity with the mural so thank you very much thank you thank you everybody thank you