Dr Jos Boys

Independent Consultant

Keynote

Recent trends in innovative learning spaces for universities have tended to focus on active, collaborative and ‘informal’ learning. In this talk, Jos considers what is currently going on across higher education globally, and the extent to which current changes in both pedagogy and environments intersect with the conceptual, physical and digital spaces of creativity. She will suggest that the creative disciplines can both learn from and ‘talk back’ to some of these shifts; and explores what this means for developing learning spaces in art and design.

About Dr Jos Boys

Dr Jos Boys is an independent consultant with a strong expertise in higher education learning spaces. She is almost unique in combining a background in architecture – both as practitioner and teacher - with many years’ experience as a researcher, HE senior manager, academic developer and educational technologist. Her most recent project was in academic development at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. This included the production of a UNSW Learning Environments report in support of the university’s new learning and teaching strategy; development of professional development programs for academics; and the co-design of two MOOCs.

Jos has written extensively on the intersections between approaches in post-secondary education and the conceptual, physical and virtual spaces of learning. She is particularly interested in relationships between creativity and space, both in exploring what kinds of spaces support creativity, and about how creative forms of learning can inform a critical engagement with current changes in higher education and its environments. Recent publications include Building Better Universities; Strategies, Spaces, Technologies (Routledge, 2014) and Towards Creative Learning Spaces: re-thinking the architecture of post-compulsory education (Routledge, 2010).