Learning from a new learning landscape: Visualisation of location sensing data in the Augustine House Experiment

This paper presents the result from the Augustine House Experiment (AHE) project funded by the UK JISC Institutional Innovation Programme. The AHE project set out to investigate how the location sensing data collected over students’ uses of the iBorrow netbooks inside the Augustine House could be visualised to convey aspects of the new learning landscape during a one-week long location sensing period. Indoor real-time location sensing technologies are considered potential new tools for collecting quantitative data as evidence of emerging patterns of occupation and uses of interior learning spaces. The project tested a data processing and visualisation method designed to render the location sensing and associated user datasets in conjunction with 3-dimensional (3D) digital architectural models of the Augustine House. The research hypothesis is that overlay of the netbooks tracking and anonymised student user data on the 3D architectural floor models could facilitate making-sense the large complex datasets significantly. Lessons and questions are drawn from this experiment regarding how a combination of location sensing, sensor & user data collection, and interactive architectural modelling could be further developed into a credible research apparatus applicable to longer-term post-occupancy evaluation of learning landscapes that could inform planning and design of future learning spaces. Introduction In recent years, the Higher and Further Education (HFE) sector in the UK have commissioned design and construction of new generation Learning Support Centres (LSC) providing spaces and facilities unseen in conventional university/college libraries. These new learning centres are often multifunctional, equipped with cutting edge information and communication technologies, and are increasingly seen as opportunities to create new corporate visual identities of HFE institutions. Recent examples of LSC include the Information Commons (Lewis, 2010), the Augustine House (Canterbury Christ Church University), the Gateway (Buckinghamshire New University), the Great Central Warehouse Library (University of Lincoln), just to name a few. To researchers in education and architecture, the LSC development trend suggests that this emerging phenomenon needs to be looked at in a different way. Rather than as a new building or program type, it is now seen as new Learning Landscapes in Higher Education (eg., Dugdale, 2009; Neary et al., 2010). Clearly, the rapid growth in the ICT industries and universal uptake of the digital worlds globally has induced profound changes in how 21 st century university students and teachers go about their learning and teaching. The messages and ideas behind the design and uses of new learning landscapes suggest a lot more emphases on spatial informality (as in the practice of social learning), ecology (blending of physical and virtual resources), inhabitation (24/7 open access and greater student-centric ownerships), interactions (social networking and group working), service-oriented (more than provision of static learning contents), and spatial views (both interior and exterior). Equally, on face of these emerging spatial qualities, functions and practices, important questions have been raised regarding how these new learning landscapes actually work in pedagogical, architectural, technological and estate management terms (Pearshouse et al., 2009; Pantidi, 2010; Boys, 2011). The design and opening of the Augustine House – a newly built large-scale learning centre at the Canterbury Christ Church University – is the latest example of the new learning landscape (Poole & Wheal, 2011). A such, the quest for a better understanding of how these new learning spaces perform in response to 21 st century learners’ as well as educators’ needs continues. What methods may constitute valid Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) studies into the new learning landscapes? How such POE studies may inform future planning, design, use and management of such learning spaces? This paper seeks to contribute to the discussion of new learning landscapes drawing on the findings from the Augustine House Experiment (AHE) project undertaken by the uCampus team based at the University of Sheffield in collaboration with the iBorrow team at Canterbury. Background and Related Work Designed by ADP at the cost of £35m for the Canterbury Christ Church University (CCCU), the Augustine House (AH) is a new purpose built, large-scale library and student services centre, enclosing some 12,500 square metres of internal floor area in four floors. A month later following the AH grand opening in October 2009, two hundred netbook computers, labelled iBorrow, were deployed inside the building as part of CCCU’s pioneering self-service laptop loan scheme to make student ICT provision easier than borrowing books (Poole et al., 2010). In addition, for research purpose, every iBorrow netbook was turned into a real-time locating device detectable by the building’s wireless infrastructure running a Cisco 3300 Series Mobility Services Engine. It therefore presents an opportunity of acquiring spatial-temporal data of the locations of iBorrow netbooks in use anywhere inside the building. Whenever an iBorrow netbook is logged on and receiving data via the wireless network it is possible to triangulate its position within the network of 120 wireless transmitters (Cisco Aironet 1242AG radio access points). As such, the technology prompts a hypothesis that a large self-service laptop loan scheme configured with Wi-Fi location sensing software is able to gather a significant amount of data over time, and that an analysis of this data could reveal patterns of ‘learning footprints’ afforded by the Augustine House (Collis, 2010). Prior to the AHE project, the uCampus platform has been developed at the University of Sheffield as an institutional application in Web-based 3D virtual campus visualisation modelling (Peng et al., 2010). Piloted with the real-world spatial and user context of the Sheffield campus, uCampus hosts 3D models of the campus terrain, buildings, and spaces in the X3D format. Users can freely access 3D architectural models not only as visualisation of the campus buildings and spaces but also as an intuitive visual context for inspecting complex data. Figure 1 shows an example of visualising spatial uses of a floor of a particular building where 3D spatial taxonomical volumes and open-top architectural floor models are overlaid to form the resultant datascape. The design of uCampus attempts to support the principle of context-rich data visualisation applicable to multiple scales ranging from room to the entire urban campus (Peng, et al., 2009). Figure 1:Overlay of multiple layers of 3D model to form a context-rich datascape on uCampus The iBorrow Netbook Location Sensing and User Dataset For the AHE project, an iBorrow netbook location tracking and anonymised user dataset was supplied by the iBorrow project team. The dataset covers only a one-week sensing period of 24 February 2010 to 3 March 2010. Given the location sensing capability of sampling every five minutes, the dataset already reaches a total 65,535 records each of which contains 18 data fields. Two sample records extracted from the original dataset are shown in Table 1. The scope of the data fields represents a joinup of anonymised student user information with tracked location of an iBorrow netbook computer used by the student. A research ethics approval and student users’ consensus have been obtained prior to launching the data collection. As shown in one of the data fields, Location, the iBorrow team have attempted a preliminary placing of the netbook tracking locations onto the different zones designated for each of the building floors. To explore a different data visualisation strategy in the AHE context, it was decided to work with the ‘raw’ data, ie. X, Y coordinates, bearing in the mind the Confidence Factor as formulated by the iBorrow team. The steps taken to turn the iBorrow netbook location sensing and user dataset into 3D datascapes are explained in the net section. Table 1: The scope of the iBorrow netbook location tracking and anonymised user dataset supplied by the iBorrow team at the Canterbury Christ Church University DATA FIELDS SAMPLE 1 SAMPLE 2 COMMENT User ID USER201002240240 USER201003010515 Anonymised ID code Level of Study Undergraduate Undergraduate UG or PG