ABSTRACT

Glasgow Caledonian University (UK), is proud of its social mission, community engagement and accessible learner-centred innovative approach to education.

The Saltire Centre, opened in January 2006, is its multi-award winning learning centre. Widely acknowledged as a paradigm of successful learning space design, it is a benchmark for educators and planners from the UK and internationally. It is one of the most ambitious and innovative learning environments in the UK, offering easy access to a range of physical and virtual services in a single location.

This paper will share the experience of designing and implementing an environment to support effective learning, teaching, collaboration and research. It will consider the evolution of the Saltire Centre as a Learning Commons for the 21st century, integrating a library with a full range of learner support services. The paper will go on to speculate on how such physical spaces may be used in parallel with emerging digital learning environments.

The paper will assess the impact of learning space design on scholarly communication and personalised learning in the University, investigating how the Saltire Centre has become a focus for social interaction and collaboration for both members of the University and the people of Glasgow. The paper will argue that creating Information Commons such as the Saltire Centre will be essential to 21st century community, democracy and citizenship.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Tom Finnigan

Tom Finnigan is the Director of Learner Support and is responsible for the operation of the multi-award winning Saltire Centre at Glasgow Caledonian University.

The Saltire Centre is the social heart of the campus, a place where students meet and converse as well as study. The design of the Centre and the way in which it is administered recognise the social origins of learning and the need for interaction between learners on different levels and in different forms. It is also a self-regulating environment, which places discussion on an equal footing with solitary learning – it is the policy of the University to give students responsibility over their learning environment as well as over the way in which they learn.

As Director of Learner Support, Tom is also responsible for delivering all services to students in an integrated one-stop-shop model of service delivery within the Saltire centre. He is a member of the Senior Management Team of the University and also represents the University on a number of United Kingdom national committees and organisations.

Tom was previously Director of the Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of Paisley. Prior to that he was a senior lecturer in Education at Craigie College of Education.

David Donald

David Donald is Director of Spoken Word Services, based in Learner Support at Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU). He is a political scientist with extensive interests in (and experience of) information technologies. David is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde (BA (Econ)) and the University of Glasgow (Diploma in Education). From 1996 to 2002 he was co-director of ‘Making Connections’, a disability access to IT project based at GCU which developed access solutions for a wide range of voluntary associations. From 1996 to 2000 he was elected to the Executive of the Information Technology section of the American Political Science Association.

Spoken Word Services is based around the Spoken Word project, one of four in the JISC / NSF initiative Digital Libraries in the Classroom. It is a partnership of, in the UK, Glasgow Caledonian University (SALTIRE Learning Centre User Support services) and the BBC Future Media and Technology) and, in the USA, Michigan State (MATRIX) and Northwestern (OYEZ and Academic Technologies). The project is ongoing and runs from 2003 to 2008.

Glasgow Caledonian has a unique deposit agreement with the BBC which has enabled it to pilot serving several hundred 'spoken word' programmes (mostly radio but some video) from its digital repository to a range of universities in Europe and the USA. Materials are selected by scholars and can then be searched, collated and annotated from a rich front end environment incorporating meta-linking across records, dynamic RSS, Atom and Podcast feeds, integration with external web services such as Google Scholar and Wikipedia.

David has overall management responsibility for the Spoken Word project at GCU and related projects. He directs and advises on the University’s participation in a number of on-going projects related to digital scholarly communications.

Iain Wallace

Iain Wallace is Digital Services Development Librarian for Spoken Word Services in Learner Support, based in the Library within the multi-award winning Saltire Centre, at Glasgow Caledonian University.

Spoken Word Services is centred around the Spoken Word project, one of four in the JISC / NSF Digital Libraries in the Classroom Programme. It is a partnership of, in the UK, Glasgow Caledonian University and the BBC (Future Media and Technology) and, in the USA, Michigan State (MATRIX) and Northwestern (OYEZ and Academic Technologies). The project is ongoing and runs from 2003 to 2008.

The Spoken Word team maintain and develop a repository of several hundred hours of digital audio and video resources for the educational community. These resources are sourced primarily, though not exclusively, from the BBC Television and Radio Archive.

Iain has day to day management responsibility for the Spoken Word project at GCU and related projects. He is involved in a number of ongoing University development projects related to digital scholarly communication.

Iain has previously worked for the Arts and Humanities Data Service and for the ADAM Service, now made available as part of INTUTE.