Sustainable learning and research environments for higher education
- Higher Education Foresights
- Spaces and Places as Learning Incubators
- Sustainability in Facilities Management
- From Experience to Peak Performance
Meeting changing needs of higher education environment with flexible and sustainable environments is of growing concern in OECD countries.
The spaces and places used in higher education are key to supporting and facilitating learning, innovation, research and knowledge transfer. As higher education continues to change the physical environment must also change.
The OECD's Programmes in Educational Building (PEB) and Institutional Management in Higher Education (IMHE) in collaboration with Helsinki University of Technology are bringing together policy makers, higher education leaders and managers, academics, designers and developers, to analyse these issues and exchange ideas on developing better and more responsive physical environments.
The conference will examine the trends in higher education and their impact on the variety of spaces and places used whether classrooms, offices, laboratories or social spaces and the spaces in between, inside and outside. With universities developing new relationships with students, research collaborators, businesses and local communities, they need a variety of places to facilitate both the formal and informal processes of interaction beyond those traditionally found in university campuses. The conference will also look at the interaction between the physical and virtual environments.
This conference will:
- Provide an opportunity to reflect on how the spaces provided within higher education will better meet the needs of higher education as they develop
- Present and share knowledge and best practice about the future learning, innovation and knowledge transfer environments
- Develop a common understanding of the requirements for sustainable and productive physical and virtual environments
- Identify spatial strategies and sustainable solutions for meeting the needs of change
- Provide the basis for more in depth analysis of the spaces and places needed for higher education
We are happy to welcome you warmly to Finland in May 2008.
Jouko Lahti Alastair Blyth Suvi Nenonen
