Diversity means providing a variety of space types and sizes to help meet the requirements of the various pedagogies, learning styles, and alternative groupings taking place in the environment. Space should be designed for a purpose and should clearly communicate what activities the space is meant to support.

The settings within the learning environment need to support a range of pedagogies, catering to different teaching and learning styles, from collaborative to individual, and from formal to informal activities.

If the function of the space is not clear, there is a risk that it will not be used for its purpose (e.g. quiet individual space being used as a collaborative space), which could then lead to other spaces being misused in order to balance out the need for certain types of spaces that might be lacking in the environment.

Examples of spaces might include: individual concentrated learning space, peer-to-peer work space, social learning space, activity-specific space grouped together and working simultaneously, external space, and group presentation space.

There is a misconception that one space should be designed to be fully ‘flexible’ when in fact this can be counterproductive. When a space is designed to be completely flexible and supporting all pedagogies, the space becomes overworked with the result that no pedagogy is supported effectively. It becomes a “one size fits all” space where everything is supported, but not very well.

Our approach within this project will be to explore, where possible, creating spaces that are diverse and best suited to the full range of learning actvities taking place within it. This may require different ways of managing the use of the space.