Our new building is full of cats! Hopefully, animal lovers won’t be too disappointed to know that when I say cats, I am not referring to the feline kind. I mean Collaborative Active Teaching Spaces (CATS).

The building, 1 Trevelyan Square, is a new campus for Leeds Trinity University. Whilst it was already built, it provided a relatively blank canvas to work with when we set about designing the learning and social spaces inside. This presented opportunities to really think about our pedagogy and practice in relation to the subjects being taught at the City Campus.

Designing Collaborative Active Teaching Spaces

The concept for the CATS is centred around all students being able to actively engage with teaching material through appropriate learning spaces and accessible technologies. Our teaching and learning environments have been designed to encourage active, collaborative interactions between students, where they can get curious about their subjects. Our three-phase teaching model encourages pre, live and post activity, where staff and students blend learning and teaching activity seamlessly, from digital, asynchronous learning spaces to the live learning experience on campus.

This means that we can optimise peer learning in large or small groups to support students to extend their knowledge and skills. One example of this ambition is in our Law, and Criminology, Investigation and Policing teaching teams who are planning together for future interdisciplinary projects. This will lead to staff and students from different, but cognate, areas working on authentic projects linked to real world casework, where students can gain insight into cases they are likely work on in their future careers.

Creating a digitally connected learning experience

Importantly, we have designed a consistent user experience, placing a focus on practice and providing familiarity of systems and devices for all staff, students and visitors. This is underpinned by a ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) principle, enabling users of the spaces to wirelessly share learning content and materials to the digital display screens. This offers greater flexibility for teaching spaces to be utilised in innovative ways, encouraging student-to-tutor, peer-to-peer, cooperative and collaborative learning.

In the lead up to the opening of the City Campus, we ran a series of CATS workshops to allow academic staff to familiarise themselves with the learning spaces and consider alternative methods of engaging students and representing learning to create digitally enhanced, inclusive and accessible educational experiences.

Implementing social justice in our teaching

As social justice is a key part of our mission at Leeds Trinity University, it is important that we create a welcoming environment for students beyond timetabled teaching activities, to include social, learning and recreational spaces so that students’ experience is purposeful and supports their wellbeing. Ultimately, we aim to provide a transformational education for our students and develop graduates who are capable of positively contributing to society in a way that creates a fairer and more equitable world.

Part of this commitment to social justice can be seen in how we place a key focus on co-creation and equitable practice. Student co-creation is at the heart of all our development, delivery and reflection, shifting the emphasis of provision for students to provision with students. The Student Co-creation Panel actively participated in 18 co-creation sessions focused on the City Campus. Their contributions led to actionable decisions across areas, such as furniture needs, Chaplaincy services, internal branding, digital facilities, career and placement support, and cafe amenities.

When students see the academic, personal and social benefits of how they can apply their discipline skills and knowledge, it ignites their curiosity. Our ambition to is create an environment that promotes critical thinking, where we co-create learning opportunities with our students.

Returning to the cats in our building, curiosity didn’t kill our CATS, it inspired them.

Professor Fiona Shelton is Founding Dean of The Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at Leeds Trinity University.