"We are at a significant inflection point in education," Phillips said. “Our research will address the urgent need for comprehensive design frameworks that optimize human-AI collaboration while safeguarding critical student-student and student-teacher interactions."

ONEder Grants support bold, interdisciplinary research into the changing nature of environments across education, workplace, and healthcare design – their grant theme this year is “Designing for Uncertainty: Adaptive Strategies for Evolving Environments.” A juror called LPA’s proposal “timely and essential,” noting that “by integrating emerging technologies with adaptive design strategies, it positions students for success in an ever evolving, lifelong learning landscape.”

"Our aim is to understand the key design considerations for creating learning ecosystems that can evolve alongside advancing AI capabilities,” said LPA Director of K-12 Kate Mraw. “Students will need to be prepared for a rapidly changing world, with the ability to learn and adapt throughout their lives.”

The research will explore adaptive design strategies that allow K-12 environments to seamlessly integrate AI-enabled personalized learning while maintaining ample human social connection and collaboration. It will also study how future K-12 spaces might balance flexibility with purpose-built zones optimized for specific disciplines like STEM labs, humanities studios, and arts spaces.

LPA’s Sustainability + Applied Research team will use a comprehensive, mixed-methods approach to study the issues. The methodology will include surveys across stakeholder groups, space audits of current facilities and workshops with students and educators to help translate findings into actionable design principles.

"Our goal is to develop universal strategies that will help unlock the full value of AI investments by ensuring physical learning environments are optimized to achieve their full potential now and into the future,” Phillips said.