The Information Commons has a new manager, and he and I met up this morning.  The IC has been one of the most successful capital projects the university has undertaken for a number of years, and it has established a key role in many aspects of student life - both as workspace and as social hub.  I chaired the Project Executive Group that oversaw the project - although the credit for the vision has to go to the Directors of Library Services and CiCS (Martin Lewis and Chris Sexton) and their staff, and to my predecessor as PVC L/T, Phil Jones.  We built the IC in the hope that stduents would use it in the way we expected - and in reality almost everything we planned for has come to fruition.

The IC has created a new way of working, and the question now is - what next?  How will students work in five or ten years time?  The fact is that we don't know.  But I am sure there will be differences from now. The IC was built to bring together IT and a bookstock.  How long will the IT need to be PCs?  Over 80% of new students arrive in Sheffield with a laptop, but few carry them around with them.  What if we encouraged students to move onto iPads or other tablet computers?  Perhaps we should issue students with an iPad at registration, preloaded with a mass of materials that we currently provide in paper copy.  Could we dispense with PCs in the IC (and elsewhere) and expect students to use their own equipment (which have issued to them)?  What about the future of blended learning?  Might we be delivering more course materials electronically in a few years time - and I am not simply thinking of the stuff that is put in the MOLE repository.  What use will students be making of books in a few years time? We are already at the position where many students have never physically opened a journal, accessing all the articles electronically.

There is a need for more spaces in which students can undertake the sort of activities they currently do in the IC.  But we need to be imaginative in order to future-proof any investment we make in such spaces.  Getting it right is not guarantee.

But on the top of all the technology, one of the simplest things students like about the IC is the 24/7 opening.   And that in itself is an indication of the way in which student work patterns have changed from previous decades when the demarcation betwen the work and leisure parts of the student day was much clearer.