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Permission granted by Austin Community College
Deep Dive
In a former shopping mall, Austin Community College sees a new way to learn
The system is experimenting with a new kind of learning space it hopes will help learners engage and find support services.
Natalie Schwartz
June 24, 2020
From the outside, the former Highland Mall in Austin, Texas, looks like
a typical shopping center, with room for dozens of boutiques and
department stores. But visitors passing through the large glassy
entrance on its west side are greeted by something else: an expansive
learning center run by Austin Community College.
The college has transformed 32,000 square feet of the mall, once a J.C.
Penney store, into a sleek, open-plan learning lab, with wood accents
and an exposed ceiling to round out the contemporary vibe. Shared
workstations with more than 600 desktop computers fill out the space.
The rest of the mall and the surrounding area, which the college also
owns, has or will soon be redeveloped into academic incubators, office
space, apartments and retail shops.
Called an ACCelerator, the lab is a place where students can take
college classes, book study rooms and access a suite of services. The
college acquired the mall in phases, spending $15.7 million to buy the
J.C. Penney building and surrounding parking lot and $46 million to
renovate the inside, according to local media reports. It opened the
ACCelerator in 2014.
The new space gave ACC room to transform the way it teaches
developmental math, drawing inspiration from Virginia Tech. The
university turned a discount department store into a massive computer
laboratory for developmental math education and overhauled its own
courses for the new format. Called the Math Emporium model, the bulk of
the instruction is self-paced and uses adaptive learning software,
saving the institution costs on instruction. Students can flag down one
of several tutors on hand if they need help with a problem.
The Emporium model's technology-based instruction hasn't improved
student success at every institution that's tried it. But dozens of
community colleges have since adopted it in the hopes it will take some
of the burden off faculty members and give students the freedom to work
at their own pace, said Wes Anthony, director of the Kellogg Institute,
which educates about best practices in developmental education.
ACC started with that model as the basis for what it would create, said
Guillermo Martinez, Austin's associate vice president for student
engagement and analytics. But, he added, "we are in Texas, so we wanted
it bigger."
Although the Highland ACCelerator first focused on developmental math,
it now offers around three dozen types of courses, from digital arts
and media to biology and geography. It also includes student services.
That lets learners access tutors for specific courses as well as
academic and career coaches for broader issues, such as time
management, test-taking skills and resume help.
One of the ACCelerator's main draws is the open-style format, which
makes it easier for students to access classes and academic help in the
same space, Martinez said. That feature isn't easily replicated on
existing campuses.
"It's not just a learning lab, it's not just a math lab and it's not
just a computer lab," he said. "It's literally a learning environment
where there's full wraparound support."
Students mostly sit at pods — curved tables that house four computers
each — in wheeled chairs they can move around. Although many classes
are taught in the ACCelerator's main area, a handful of regular
classrooms are available on the outskirts as well, Martinez said.
"The biggest difference is for the faculty. They're no longer up in
front of the classroom," he added. "There are not four walls."
The success of the Highland ACCelerator prompted officials to build two more.
One, located on the San Gabriel campus, boasts 110,000 square feet and
includes a computer lab, science labs, a library and a rooftop terrace.
A third recently opened on Austin's Round Rock campus and a fourth is
slated for completion in 2021.
The change has worked for ACC. Students who visit one of the
ACCelerators seven or more times are around six percentage points more
likely to persist into the next semester than students who don't visit
one of them, according to a college release.
The impact is more significant on new students, who are 11 percentage
points more likely to persist if they visit one of the ACCelerators.
"For the students that have never been to ACC and that go to this type
of environment, they like it so much that they stick around," Martinez
said.
A new way to learn
The ACCelerators borrow tactics from active-learning classrooms. There,
movable seating and desks let students face each other to make
collaboration easier, and whiteboards give them a place to solve
problems together. The goal is for students to work through problems,
whether alone or in groups, rather than listen passively to a lecture.
This design also encourages more one-on-one work between professors and
their students, said Curtiss Stevens, executive director of the
ACCelerators. Students are "talking with the faculty," he said.
"They're getting that individualized attention."
However, Stevens noted that not all developmental math classes are held
in ACCelerators, and it's likely to stay that way to offer students
more flexibility if they prefer or perform better in the traditional
class format.
Dozens of colleges have pivoted toward active-learning models, and
several studies have found this mode of instruction generally has
stronger learning outcomes than traditional lectures.
"Because often you have screens or whiteboards around the room,
students have a little closer access to the content," Tracey Birdwell,
program director of Indiana University's active-learning initiative,
said of active-learning classrooms. "The information is a little more
diffuse and democratized throughout the room, which means it's a little
bit more accessible to students."
"It's not just a learning lab, it's not just a math lab and it's not
just a computer lab. It's literally a learning environment where
there's full wraparound support."
Students may not always feel like they're learning as much in these
types of environments, however. In 2019, Harvard University researchers
found that students taking an introductory physics course learned more
in active-learning classrooms, even though they thought they learned
more from typical lectures.
Louis Deslauriers, a physics instructor at Harvard and lead author of
the study, said this is likely because active learning takes more
effort than listening to "superstar lecturers," he said. "When things
get difficult, which learning should be, sometimes students are going
to misinterpret that as a sign of poor learning, when exactly the
opposite is true."
When the Highland ACCelerator first opened, in the fall of 2014,
students who visited it were far more likely to receive a C or higher
in the developmental classes, as well as persist into the next semester
than students in non-ACCelerator courses.
Although some of these gaps have narrowed as ACC expanded the
ACCelerator format, course data shows students are still seeing these
types of benefits.
'Location, location, location'
Although the redeveloped Highland mall draws visitors from community
colleges and other organizations, Martinez suggested its scale and cost
could make it hard to duplicate. ACC got some assistance when voters
passed two bond proposals in 2014 that gave the college $386 million
for capital improvements, part of which will help it further develop
the Highland mall.
"It's beautiful and it's huge, but it's not necessarily the replicable
one," he said, adding that the smaller ACCelerators are easier to build.
However, several other community colleges are transforming former malls
or big-box stores into learning spaces. Among them is the College of
the Desert, a two-year institution in California. It is in the process
of turning a former mall in Palm Springs into a 330,000-square-foot
campus. It purchased the property in 2018 for $22 million after the
mall had been mostly abandoned for years.
Grand Rapids Community College, in Michigan, purchased a former J.C.
Penney in January. It plans to renovate the space for $12 million in
order to consolidate programs spread across four nearby locations.
Bill Pink, president of Grand Rapids, invoked a common real estate
mantra to explain the allure of purchasing mall space: "location,
location, location."
"Malls are typically placed in high-traffic areas, and accessibility is
important," he said, adding that they are usually also close to a bus
line. "All those things make sense for community colleges as well."
Meanwhile, community colleges can help revitalize malls that are
struggling to compete with mega-retailers such as Amazon and the rise
of online shopping. Students can bring in business by patronizing
stores after their classes and by drawing companies to the area who
want to employ them.
"The information is a little more diffuse and democratized throughout
the room, which means it's a little bit more accessible to students."
Des Moines Area Community College picked up a 65,000 square-foot space
in 2012 that used to house a J.C. Penney for $1. In return, the college
pays the developer that owns the mall around $8,000 a month for
security support and maintenance.
The college renovated the former department store for $13 million to
include spaces for a broad spectrum of classes, including welding and
healthcare.
"What (the property owners) were interested in was drawing more
individuals to the mall area," said Rob Denson, the college's
president. The college, he added, wanted a site close to where a
significant portion of their students live.
Now, the college is converting an additional 20,000 square feet of the
mall into classrooms and offices. "It really works," Denson said. "We
have a highly visible facility."
ACC similarly hopes to revitalize the area around its outposts by
partnering with a developer to transform the remaining space into
apartments, offices and retail shops — some of which have already
opened.
The college also plans to open another wing of the mall next year that
will include a workforce development center replete with a makerspace
and equipment for advanced manufacturing, as well as a media center,
performing arts space and student-operated restaurant.
Before the college bought the property, the mall "was disappearing" and
plagued by vandalism, ACC's Martinez said. Now, there's a multiyear
plan to bring new people through its doors. "Once it's all said and
done," he said, "we'll probably serve about 15,000 students."
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