Learning Commons

The Learning Common is a meeting place, typically offering at least one area where students can rearrange furniture to accommodate impromptu planning sessions or secure a quiet place to work near a window. In response to course assignments, which have taken a creative and often collaborative turn in the past two decades, the learning commons provides areas for group meetings, tools to support creative efforts, and on-staff specialists to provide help as needed. And yet the successful learning commons does not depend solely upon adaptable space configuration or the latest technological gear.

Learning Commons tend to be informal learning areas suited to independent or group study, project work and differentiated instruction, often thought of as the evolution of library environments. Learning Commons are frequently resource and IT-rich, with versatile, adaptable furnishings to support online education, collaboration, content creation and display, meetings, and independent study.