Giving Compass' Take:

• Daisy Yuhas describes life at the Hellerup School Denmark where students tackle project-based learning assignments in an open-plan space. 

• What are the advantages of this model? Not every student will thrive in this environment, how can funders help students access the schools best suited to their needs? 

• Learn about high-quality project-based learning. 

Hellerup is an open-plan school. There are no classrooms but rather a series of contiguous, multipurpose spaces arrayed around the central stairs, which themselves double as social meeting areas or lecture seats. Furniture and temporary folding walls form moveable enclaves and nooks.

The school’s aim is to foster an environment in which student and teacher together are jointly responsible for learning. That heightened sense of ownership, which some research suggests could strengthen students’ desire to learn, is one of the many facets of an educational approach called “personalized learning.” Although definitions vary broadly, personalized learning endeavors to design educational experiences that suit an individual student’s abilities and interests. It’s an idea that’s gaining traction as technology offers new tools for both tracking student learning and customizing classwork based on past performance.

Hellerup, now in its 16th year of operation, is like a living laboratory for these ideas and one that has inspired other schools to take similar steps. Over time, the community has made adjustments, including increasing its emphasis on social development and collaborative work, in part to address concerns that personalized learning might be solitary learning. As the school continues to find its footing, it can offer lessons for other schools to follow, even if they do so on a smaller scale.

Another major component of the school’s curriculum is project-based work. Several times throughout the academic year, other classes are suspended, and students focus exclusively on their cross-disciplinary projects while working on small teams. At the end of a week devoted to a given project, groups present their work to teachers and peers.

Read the full article about an open-plan school by Daisy Yuhas at The Hechinger Report.