PurposeEducational facilities and their design have considerable impact on how students learn. Recent research indicates that modern university students are spending less time on campus and more time interacting with their peers through technology. This paper aims to examine the responses of a small number of first year university students, at RMIT University, Melbourne, to questions about the type of learning facilities they want on campus.Design/methodology/approachFirst year undergraduate students were interviewed about their engagement with university and in particular their learning styles in the physical environment. Although a small volunteer sample (n=12), they were all first‐time users of the university and its facilities. The average age of the sample was 19.8 years. The case studies were interviewed regularly (n=8) over a 12‐month period and their responses to learning needs and styles and university facilities recorded. The gender mix (m=8, f=4) reflected the enrolment patterns in the university school. The students were given a range of discussion triggers in semi‐structured interviews to promote discussion about their own learning styles and where and when they felt they learnt best at university.FindingsThe responses of these students indicate a number of features about their interpretation of the relationship between university learning and teaching expectations and facilities. These are: learning for these students occurred in both formal and informal settings; there was evidence that the timetabled facility dictated the teaching style used and the opportunities for collaborative learning; active learning occurred more often for these students away from the classroom, often in informal, ad hoc spaces; these students placed an important emphasis on the technology available throughout the university; and the students favoured collaborative, social spaces for learning and technology exchange. The conclusions drawn from their responses indicate that these university students want flexible learning spaces that can adapt to both individual and collaborative work with a strong emphasis on social learning and advanced technology. The responses also indicate a mismatch between existing lecture theatres and tutorial rooms and the third space learning that these students want. The results have implications for the design and construct of future teaching and learning spaces in universities and other learning institutions.Practical implicationsFisher notes the importance of safety, security, natural ventilation, lighting and other physical features as conducive to effective learning. Students in this study also indicated a need for multi‐use spaces for intense work and learning opportunities. These spaces also need to allow for students to interact with the global environment through technology.Originality/valueThe changes in learning and teaching have been significant in the past 25 years and the role of features such as technology, collaborative spaces and third space learning have created pressure on unive...

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Teaching multiliteracies across the curriculum: Changing contexts text and image in classroom practice is written as a textbook for literacy educators. Unsworth takes the notion of 'multiliteracies' and applies it to the genres of English, history and science, discussing in some detail how grammatical structures can be used to critically understand print and visual representations of knowledge.A critical grammatical approach is one which has grown from recent shifts in thinking. Pedagogy, in many ways, is still working to accommodate the major theoretical and technological shifts in the late 20th century. The area of literacy is a telling illustration of some of the struggles which have accompanied changes in ideologies and practice. Critical thinking suggests that everything is a text and that all texts are socially constructed as, in turn, are we through the texts we read and write. 'Reading' and 'writing' became configured as 'literacy', or 'literacies', to describe the multifaceted and multimodal ways that texts are read and produced.Conceptualisations of English and literacy have undergone their own political variations. In the 1980s, those from a linguistic tradition sought a more socially critical, systematic approach. These views formed from systemic functional linguistics, or hew' grammar, a grammar which was seen to offer a useful metalanguage for analysis of ideological construction. It is the new grammar position which Unsworth finnly occupies in Multiliteracies across the curriculum. The functional grammar approach gained purchase in curriculum documents and some schools, particularly in primary classrooms. Unsworth claims that it generated a 'fresh and inviting perspective on the nature and role of grammar in teaching' (p. 23), and this linguistic approach has led, for example, to the inclusion of the English Language subject in the Victorian Certificate of Education.However, new language frameworks are rarely accepted without controversy and, in this case, a structured grammatical approach to literacy has had to defend itself against a more broadly personal and social view of language. Unsworth adds another voice to this side of the argument. His textbook is comprehensive in its theoretical framing as well as dense in application of theory to both primary and secondary curriculum, and it is literacy teachers for whom he writes. 'Multiliteracies', now a catchphrase in modern literacy practices, describes the ways that meaning is made from the multiple resources of language and image. Systemic functional grammar offers, according to Unsworth, an effective tool to analyse the different ways that print, visual and electronic texts are constructed. Furthermore his approach to teaching delves into the specific ways that various curriculum subjects deploy different language structures, or genres. H e focuses at some length on the linguistic variations within history, science and English, providing a technical language for analy5is of visual and print texts. Accessible tables are offered comparing genres a...