Optimizing Physical & Virtual Environments in Universities

How can we optimize local and virtual spaces to empower students to be effective collaborative learners?
Universities largely operate in the realm of the physical, even while the burgeoning learning ecosystem has been predominantly virtual. This roundtable moved beyond this binary way of thinking and considered how each side might inform the other, blending the best of the physical and virtual worlds in service of educating the whole person. Our participants discussed how to talk about scale in more nuanced ways, beyond the narrow scope of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

Can the current wave of new technologies, including interactive group video, be used to scale up more complex interaction and mentoring? Will universities, the vital nodes in the higher education systems of the past, retain their vitality in the future? Much of this will depend on how well universities understand the new learning ecosystem outside their walls, and how successfully universities redefine their role, and their relevance, in the future.