About the project
The School has launched an Education and Student Experience strategic project to create LSE's first Teaching and Learning Spaces Strategy.
The strategy has been developed across the 2025/26 academic year and has already informed the design of n student facing floors in 61 Aldwych.
It will also be used to guide the School's significant ongoing investment in developing and refurbishing education spaces, AV and associated infrastructure across campus.
More about the project and timelines
The project has gathered evidence from across LSE and the wider higher education sector.
It has drawn on departments, student-facing units, existing LSE research, students' own experiences and a study visit to leading US universities. The aim is to bring together the latest thinking on pedagogy, technology, and physical and digital spaces.
Timeline
- Initiation (November 2025): project set up, with plan and governance arrangements in place
- Research (November 2025 to May 2026): external and internal research to build the evidence base, covering education space trends and a baseline of LSE teaching and learning spaces
- Engagement and consultation (January to March 2026): a series of engagement, input, co-ideation and reference visit events
- Strategy development (April to June 2026): an initial draft strategy and report, refined with the Project Strategic Oversight Group, with endorsement planned from the ESE Steering Group and Education Committee
- Department Consultation and SMC direction (July 2026): detailed consultation completed with Departments with a clear request to prioritise – urgently – fixing what is currently broken before ahead of more far reaching improvements, that was strongly endorsed by SMC
- Room Audit and Strategy Mobilisation (August to November 2026): completion of detailed baseline of all c. 150 timetabled spaces using trained student auditors; and mobilisation of 1st year of implementation focused on fixing what is currently broken
- Autumn Term 2026/27: incorporation of all consultation feedback and approval of final strategy by the School Management Committee
What we have achieved so far
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Internal research completed: 685 student voices, drawn from 8 room observations, 8 teacher and 27 student field interviews, 599 responses to a short-form student experience survey, 18 responses to a student academic representative survey, and 41 participants in 4 student focus groups
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Existing evidence reviewed: 11 previous studies and data sets, alongside input from 28 department and student-facing units
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Internal perspectives brought together: findings from teaching observations, student voices and existing evidence have been combined into a single picture of how spaces are currently used and experienced
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US study visit (June 2026): the team visited Kellogg School of Management (Northwestern), Georgetown, the University of Pennsylvania, New York University and Harvard to see how leading universities are planning for the next 10 years of education
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Key lessons from the visit: teaching rooms that prioritise faculty and fast, intuitive AV; extensive independent learning and social spaces; rapid-response room support; and a design thinking approach to developing and improving rooms
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Student teaching room audit: 10 students recruited and trained to work in pairs, auditing every teaching room during gaps in the timetable and where necessary after hours against a Qualtrics survey covering up to 325 questions depending on room configuration and problems found; including multi choice questions photographs and free text
Project delivery
The strategy will provide a strategic framework and a suite of practical, implementable space concepts to support our foreseeable future breadth of teaching delivery, independent learning, and the broader student experience. As well as guiding and speeding up decision making, these concepts will ensure that investment in our teaching spaces benefits from best available thinking, while remaining anchored in the needs of departmental teaching as they evolve over the next 5-10 years.
We will additionally move all project and operational aspects of our education spaces towards people centred principles, designing spaces and wrap around services that prioritise what educators need to be able to do, and how students engage with their learning in practice.
The immediate focus is improving the basic functioning and support for our timetabled teaching spaces, and piloting a new space format in CLM 2.02 designed for larger scale blended teaching formats with opportunity for greater digital enrichment.
Who is leading the project
Craig Walker, an external expert, has been appointed as the Project Lead. Craig has extensive experience and a proven track record of developing learning-centred, innovative teaching and learning spaces and associated infrastructure, and is well-placed to draw together the many stakeholder perspectives and progress the interdependent strands of this project.
Craig will report into Stella Ekebuisi, Head of Digital Education Futures, who is the Project Executive.
Project Strategic Oversight Group
The project will be overseen by the Project Strategic Oversight Group which is chaired by Emma McCoy, Vice President and Pro-Vice Chancellor (Education), and includes:
- Stella Ekebuisi, Head of Digital Education Futures
- Nick Gilbert, Chief Information Officer
- Julian Robinson, Director of Estates
- Thomas Watson, Head of Strategy and Portfolio Management, Education and Student Experience