E‐learning is increasingly adopted in the workplace for supporting professional development and continuing education; however, in higher education, the use of e‐learning is predominantly used as a tool support teaching. As a relatively new priority for universities, this paper explores what influences its adoption. Challenges identified in the literature include organisational features of universities like faculty autonomy and dispersed academic perspectives. This study, carried out at the University of Warwick, adopted a phenomenological approach and explored participants' perceptions through a series of faculty‐based focus groups and individual interviews. Factors identified as influential to adoption of e‐learning included the institutional infrastructure, staff attitudes and skills, and perceived student expectations. Participants suggested the importance of an institutional strategy targeted at providing sufficient resources and guidance for effective implementation. This strategy needs to be supported by a varied programme of staff development and opportunities for sharing practice among colleagues. In further developing understanding in this area, it would be beneficial to replicate the study with other stakeholder groups (including the leadership team and students) to develop an institutional strategy responsive at all levels of implementation. It would also be valuable to investigate the extent to which these findings are replicated within other workplaces looking to adopt innovation.

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sessions. This paper reports on use of the facility during its first three years, considering the effects on pedagogy of experimental use of space and technology; this is correlated to an increase in number and variety of teaching and learning activities which, it is suggested, enhances the student experience.

Higher education institutions are increasingly exploring how they can use emerging technologies to develop and enhance the learning experiences offered to students. These activities have mainly focused on developing student-centred facilities. The University of Warwick has taken the next step by developing a space (the Teaching Grid) specifically designed to meet the needs of teaching staff across the institution. This paper describes how the Teaching Grid supports teachers by providing a flexible experimental space together with a rich collection of established and new technologies, and with comprehensive staff support. We analysed the use of the facility during the first 30 months of operation, using data collected from 119 case studies, in order to present a perspective on how they have used the technologies and how this has impacted on their teaching practice. We present a taxonomy that provides a concrete framework to support future analysis of and comparisons between such spaces.Coupled with such technologies is the realisation that appropriate configuration of space allocated to the teaching and learning process is also fundamental to the success of an educational activity (Chism, 2002;Temple, 2007), and many institutions have trialled initiatives in which configurable learning spaces are equipped with up-to-date educational technologies. Much of the focus of such initiatives is learner-centric, providing tools and support to help students maximise their educational experience. However, a formal educational activity involves both students and teachers, and often the teacher receives-or is perceived to receive-less support than the students and fewer opportunities to innovate their teaching practice. Furthermore, students who are exposed in school to up-to-date classroom facilities, and who often engage with cutting-edge technologies outside of class, may be more comfortable with new technologies than their teachers: Academic staff are nowadays facing new pedagogical challenges; they have to design learning environments which respond to the changing needs of technology-savvy students; and they have to integrate ICT into their courses to extend the flexibility of educational services in universities. (Schneckenberg, 2009, p. 413) Despite expectations of student awareness of and demand for technology (as characterised by the concept of "digital native") the nature and extent of how this might affect their approach to learning is still a matter of debate (Bennett, Maton & Kervin, 2008). The skills that students have may be very different to those required in innovative learning sessions, and the way that they view the technology may itself be a barrier. In order to use the technologies effectively themselves and to aid their students in doing so as well, teachers require timely and effective support. In this paper, we describe a novel facility, the Teaching Grid, developed at the University of Warwick, which supports teachers by synthesis of a flexible experimental space, a rich provision of technologies an...