learning per square foot, and learning ecosystems

back from the social learning space symposium now - and have come to the conclusion that there's just too much to cover in one blog post. so am going to try and do it in stages, by picking out one or two key messages from each session.



so, will start at the beginning. well, not right at the very beginning - the less said about my 'adventures' on the way from the hotel to wheatley campus, the better. skipping lightly over those details then, and on to the opening keynote, which was delivered by deborah bickford (university of dayton). this was a really great talk - very engaging, with a core message about the importance of community in learning. if you're unfamiliar with deborah's work, there's a chapter in the educause learning spaces e-book that's worth a look: community: the hidden context for learning. now, dayton are in the position of having 95% of their undergraduates living on-campus (with all the attendant benefits and drawbacks this brings) so while some of the specifics might not be easily or broadly applicable, there were some interesting concepts that we'll be wrestling with over the coming weeks and months.

a couple of key things worth picking out here: firstly, the notion of 'learning per square foot'. anyone familiar with learning space discussions in higher education will be familiar with the importance that is placed on space management and allocation, or how many square feet do we allow per student? while i'm sympathetic to the pressures that planners work under, the idea of instead thinking about how much learning there would be per square foot is a much more attractive one to think about. difficult to measure, of course, but interesting to think about how this might open up conversations. we've been having very similar discussions across shu (though possibly not quite as eloquently as that!) particularly in terms of the new extension to the learning centre, and trying to get people to start thinking about effective learning environments, rather than asking 'how many student desks can we fit in here?'. i'll save the outcomes of those conversations for another post :)

the second key idea that i'd like to mention briefly here is the idea of moving away from thinking about individual classrooms, or individual learning spaces. instead, what is important is how these individual spaces connect and interact with each other, how together they can enable effective learning to take place. i think this is a really powerful message - after all, there's only so much that can be achieved in any one setting. but to think about how a formal learning space (let's say a standard classroom) can feed into and be fed from a connected series of informal, social spaces, how the learning can flow between them, and be strengthened by these connections - that offers some real food for thought.

this notion of learning ecosystems is particularly relevant for some of the faculty-based discussions we've been having recently, in terms of co-locating spaces to allow student-centred, collaborative learning activities - in one case, focussing on media production. so having an area where students can record their activity/discussions, co-locating this near to editing/production facilities, with social viewing areas and appropriate support nearby. we're still working on these ideas, and waiting to hear how much we might be able to achieve this year - but the ideas presented at the symposium have given me some new perspectives to bring into the discussion.