Expanding the Concept of Learning Spaces for Industrial Engineering Education

A common problem in higher education consists of students not recognizing relevance in their studies for realworld applications and their future professional careers. This commonly refers to a lack of connection of learning contents and activities with pertinent real-life situations and the type of educational model in which students are immersed. This difficulty might be approached by incorporating learning experiences into the learning process expanding the concept of learning spaces beyond the common idea of locations where learning occurs. A method is presented to design learning spaces from this perspective making an adaptation of the Soft Systems Methodology (SSM). Two instances of learning spaces for Industrial Engineering education are presented to exemplify the use of the method. ©The authors, IEEE.