New report proposes new ways of understanding social learning on campus in an ever-evolving higher education landscape
21 May 2025
AUDE and UDF have published a new research report on social learning at university, providing valuable insights for universities on how they can deliver spaces that meet the needs of students and staff.
Jointly commissioned by the Association of University Directors of Estates (AUDE), Universities Design Forum (UDF), and Willmott Dixon, the research project was led by Cardiff University’s Dr Hiral Patel and Dr Katherine Quinn, with Fiona Duggan of FiD.
The report addresses fundamental questions about the value of a campus. University students are increasingly learning in ways that are both programmed and self-directed, in physical and virtual space, on campus and elsewhere. In this complex and changing situation, students can feel that their online communities are as strong and important as their physical ones. All kinds of factors have driven this shift – the expectation of lifelong learning availability, a modularised approach to the curriculum, a greater focus on wellbeing, technological developments, the move towards a hybrid/flexible way of working in the post-Covid world, and the push towards low-carbon campuses among them.
Social learning @ university is a relationship-based process that happens within and beyond timetabled classes. On-campus spaces that facilitate social learning outside timetabled classes are as important as those spaces where timetabled sessions happen.
The research report proposes a new spatial concept, called C-Space, for an integrated campus-wide approach to support learning activities outside timetabled sessions. C-Space might take many forms – study spaces with kitchenettes, a simple corridor bench, a student society-run café, an interdisciplinary data visualisation lab, a network of sensory spaces, an outdoor garden or a clinical skills practice space, for instance. The key aspect of these spaces is that they are all supported by collaborative stewardship involving students as well as academic and professional services staff, and enabled through institutional commitment. These spaces require ongoing care.
C-Space is closely linked to the curriculum in its broadest sense – it is not a peripheral space. The report argues that if social learning is central to the learning experience, C-Space is an essential part of core provision that takes account of how students actually use and want to use campuses. At its best, these spaces are reliable and convenient spaces for developing competences and knowledge, creating opportunities to collaborate and innovate, while also being affordable and providing a good return on investment.
At a time when every university is thinking about its estates operating costs, and the affordability of its space for the core teaching and research activities, ensuring that we are alert to options to rethink and repurpose our spaces – refreshing, repairing, refurbishing or releasing space as necessary – is fundamental to the estates mindset.
We are very grateful to the research group and everyone that has participated in or helped to steer this research over the last three years. It has become clear that a lot of our assumptions about what social learning is, and what social learning spaces are and could be, aren’t really right, and I’d encourage AUDE members to engage with this report to help themselves update their thinking. We are dealing with some pretty fundamental questions of HE provision here – what is the value of a campus, what do we need to learn and how and where do we need to learn those things? How can we encourage students to stay on campus and draw the maximum value from it yet not actually be in a traditional classroom space?
