Students' learning patterns and learning spaces in higher education: an empirical investigation in China

Learning spaces in higher education are changing in crucial and myriad ways. It is important to know how learning spaces are associated with learning in order to provide students with the most appropriate spaces to learn. This study investigates the relationship between students' learning patterns and learning spaces in higher education through empirical work. It was divided into two phases - firstly, it selected two contrasting learning spaces in a Chinese university and used an adapted Inventory of Learning Styles (ILS) to compare how students went about their learning differently within the spaces. In the second stage, students were recruited to participate in focus group interviews, in which they were asked about their learning experiences of, and attitudes towards, the spaces. Quantitative and qualitative data were combined and analysed in order to identify patterns of covariation that related to features of students' learning patterns and preferences for learning spaces. The findings revealed that students with features of a typical application-directed learning pattern preferred flexible, innovative learning spaces; students who showed characteristics of a reproductive learning pattern considered traditional, didactic learning spaces as desirable or necessary; and students who adopted more strategies of a meaning-directed learning pattern placed less emphasis on the importance of space as they tended to choose different types of learning space according to their own learning needs. Implications for further research and practice of learning spaces in higher education, as well as the generalisability of the findings, are discussed.