Innovative Spaces

Laurier offers a broad range of spaces for our students and faculty, and we continue to innovate in space design. From social innovation hubs to collaborative active learning classroom design, Laurier’s spaces continue to inspire.

Active Learning Classrooms

Active learning classrooms provide opportunities for student collaboration and information sharing. Student tables are arranged in pods. There are multiple projection surfaces around the classroom that allow both instructors and students to display content. Active learning classrooms are ideally suited to courses that seek to leverage collaboration between students while blending high- and low-tech pedagogies – groups can easily collaborate with and without technology.

Flexible Learning Spaces

Flexible learning spaces facilitate greater interaction between students and instructors than traditional or fixed-seating classrooms. Furniture can be quickly and quietly rearranged to suit a variety of classroom activities and students can group themselves together for collaboration or organize themselves in rows depending on the course goals. Multiple whiteboards around the room help facilitate collaboration and the technology is the same as in a traditional classroom, with a central projector for the instructor’s content.

Purpose Lab

The Purpose Lab exists as the epicentre of student-driven social innovation on Laurier’s Waterloo campus. The world’s most complex issues require interdisciplinary collaboration. The Purpose Lab is where students from all faculties and years can draw on their passions and interests to ideate, collaborate, and implement tangible and impactful social innovations and enterprises. Laurier’s mission is to inspire lives of leadership and purpose; the Purpose Lab is bringing that mission to life. The Purpose Lab was made possible from generous donations from both the Wilfrid Laurier University Alumni Association and the Student Life Levy Fund.

Laurier-City Hub

Laurier-City Hub is a social and policy innovation hub where students, municipalities, Laurier experts and researchers, and community stakeholders co-create innovative solutions that address strategic priorities and challenges. Currently, the Laurier-City Hub houses Laurier’s Department of Global Studies unique and strategic partnership with the City of Waterloo.

Community Innovation Hub

The Community Innovation Hub is the focal point for entrepreneurship and social innovation at the Brantford campus. It is designed to provide students, staff, faculty, alumni and Brantford community members with a collaborative space to facilitate social innovation and entrepreneurship activities

Lightboard Studio

Laurier’s Lightboard Studio has everything instructors need to produce dynamic and visually rich video content for their courses. The studio is equipped with a camera and microphones and is centred around a learning glass lightboard, which allows instructors to write and draw concepts on the transparent glass surface in front of them without having to turn away from the camera. Ideally suited to record blended and online learning course content, Laurier’s Lightboard Studio is an innovative space for faculty to layer new interactivity into their online and on-campus courses.

The Creativity Hub

The Creativity Hub at Laurier is a project that aims to accentuate the academic, creative and entrepreneurial elements that already make Laurier’s Brantford campus notable and unique. It is an academic, industry and government collaboration; a vibrant physical location for experiential learning and research mobilization; and a workplace focused on the development of artistic co-production and creative ventures. It partners with Laurier’s academic programming in User Experience Design, Game Design and Development, and a variety of other humanities and social science programs. The Creativity Hub draws strength from strategic partnerships, which include Conestoga College, Six Nations Polytechnic, and industry partners.