Although it seems awhile ago now, I thought I had better write about my last day at Griffith University (3rd July) prior to flying to Darwin for the HERDSA Conference. I spent most of the morning meeting with Dr Calvin Smith, the Associate Director of the Griffith Institute for Higher Education, and we got on very well indeed and signed an agreement to foster closer links between the Griffith Institute and the Newport CELT. Indeed, he pledged that either he or a colleague would visit Newport before the year was out! After a successful meeting, I said goodbye to Calvin, Christine and their colleagues at the Griffith Institute, with a promise to put into action the agreement we had signed.
I then made the most of being at Griffith to visit their respected Centre for Coastal Management, which reflects my subject interests as a coastal geographer. My host at the Centre was Dr Hong Zhang of the School of Engineering, whose research specialises on coastal hydrodynamics. Hong kindly took me to lunch with her colleague Dr Graham Jenkins, whose father was, incidentally, from Newport! After lunch, I delivered a lecture on my research on the Severn Estuary, and with the current debate over the pro's and con's of the proposed Severn Barrage, was of interest to the 20 or so engineers present. After questions from the floor, Hong and I exchanged reprints of our papers and I suggested that I put the Newport Engineers in touch with her School.
My last task for the day, and indeed my visit to Griffith University, was to undertake some higher education 'field work' and have a look at the learning spaces provided by the campus library. Immediately as one walks in, you are confronted by rather unconventional furnishings and layout with soft furniture and virbant colours. There is an area they call the 'Tech Park' and a 'Laptop Lounge', but there weren't many students around because I was visiting in a vacation period. They also had a cafe style 'Journal Lounge' for consulting periodicals, journals and newspapers, with Friesian patterned flooring! There is also a general seating area called the 'Club Lounge', which has airport-style seating interspersed with chairs, soft cushions of different shapes, and wide open spaces that allow students to organise and manufacture their own learning environment. There is also some toghtly-packed lounge seating that seems conducive to lively student discussions.
The Library also provides an area with more traditional office-style tables and chairs, and whiteboards; and for those that feel more at ease perched on a bar-stool, the Library provides what I can only describe as a 'Learning Bar', which wouldn't seem out of place in a night club! I was also interested to see the modern designs of their 'Group Study Pods'. I have seen these in other libraries, but none quite so sci-fi looking as these. All of these different learning spaces were on the ground floor and, apart from periodicals, I didn't see a single book on the floor - they were upstairs. It seems the Griffith Library is an exciting place for student learning to take place in.
I really enjoyed my two days at Griffith University's Gold Coast Campus, made some good new colleagues in the Griffith Institute of Higher Education, and the Centre for Coastal Management, as well as getting some good ideas about learning spaces that I'm sure will be of interest back at Newport. I left Griffith looking forward to the enxt leg of the ExPedR trip and the HERDSA Conference in Darwin.
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