endless distractions...

i did mean to update this towards the end of last week, but 'distraction' has been a bit of a theme recently. aside from the distractions provided by various other, urgent work-related things (from which the tweets themselves have been proving welcome distraction, obviously...) we've recently received the first sets of longer summaries from the participants - which have sent me off in all sorts of directions. and one of the themes that's come up time and again is that of - you've guessed it! - distraction(s) within the environment.

we picked 3 things that each participant had talked about, and asked them to provide a little more information about each. the areas we asked about covered things such as:

• choice of physical location for activity (eg, do you only choose this location for one type of learning activity, or does it support others equally?)
• what made this location work for you and/or what about it hindered you (eg, presence or lack of technology?; access to resources and/or people?; atmosphere? etc)
• opportunistic use of locations (eg, unbooked classrooms, transport, etc)

we've now got some fairly rich summaries that cover a number of issues, which we're hoping to investigate further during the later interviews.

one thing that's struck me, though, is the human dimension to the spaces that our students are using. in some cases, having other people around provides a distraction (sometimes welcome, sometimes not!). for example, some students prefer not to use a particular location because the other people who use it create too much noise, preventing them from concentrating or having meaningful discussions. on other occasions, lack of other people can be equally disturbing - one student describing parts of the library as 'too quiet' to concentrate; another talking about how she doesn't like studying in the library over night as it's 'too spooky' with only security staff around. conversely, another student talks about how she often chooses the library to work in because although she can access resources from home, the presence of other students - even those she doesn't know - makes her feel 'safe'.

the tweeting continues!

3 days in, and this is surpassing all my expectations! we're getting some very enthusiastic tweets offering fascinating tid-bits of information about the variety of places that students use, as well as some great insights into their lives and personalities.

there are times when it makes us jealous - like when we're holed up in the office, and get an update saying that one of the participants is reading in sheffield's botanical gardens - no fair! but nice to see that even in the english spring/winter mid-season, we can still take advantage of the outdoors. (incidentally, sheffield is often talked about as england's greenest city, so on a nice day there are plenty of green spaces to relax in, even within reach of the city centre. this is part of the botanical gardens during summer last year: oh, hang on, this isn't supposed to be a plug on behalf on the sheffield tourist board...back to the task at hand).

there are some interesting notes hinting at the importance of being in a particular type of environment - eg, "in collegiate learning centre, getting helped on some work by a friend. better to meet here than at home - more likely to get work done!" - which is a nice indication of the continuing importance of providing appropriate on-campus environments even when students can access the things they need at a distance. although someone much more after my own heart has told us that she can concentrate better in the pub. she claims it's the lack of computers that does it, but i have other theories... :)

as mentioned above, we're getting some insights into other areas of the participants' lives and study, which are proving endlessly distracting and fascinating - for example one of them has posted a link to her tutor's blog - which looks like a fascinating exploration of literacies, media, and life. one to track for later, i think!

we're gearing up for exam season at the moment, so lots of talk about revision - the notion of 'casually revising' is a new one on me...and even better is a new catch-phrase: 'muddled study' - referring to trying to slot studying around family life, car maintenance, and cooking - i really like that one alot!

finally (for now, at least) something that's surprising me - students finding spare classrooms near their teaching sessions for revision, study, assignment writing. not sure why i find it surprising - though we're always told that there's a lot of pressure on teaching space, perhaps more to do with people block booking spaces then not using them? - but it's these sort of unanticipated uses of space that really interest me. more later...i really must get on with some of the less exciting, day-to-day bits of my work for a while...

tweeting about spaces for learning

i'm so ridiculously excited about this!

a while ago i started playing with twitter, the micro-blogging site. at first, it didn't seem like such a big deal - writing a short update (a 'tweet') about what i was doing at any point in time (usually either "sat at work" or "yay! work's over - off to the pub...") was mildly diverting, and reading other people's tweets was interesting - but just confirmed that everyone else has a much more interesting life than me. and then one day, while on the cross-campus dash between shu's city and psalter lane sites, i sent an update from my phone - and suddenly, i had a hare-brained idea...

at the time we were looking at appropriate methodology for the next phase of learning spaces research. we're particularly interested in how the attributes of spaces make them conducive - or not - to informal learning. we'd been thinking about using reflective diaries - something that had worked well previously as part of our e-learning research - but what if we could get our students to tell us what they were doing at the point in which they were doing it? what if they could tell us where they were learning there and then?

like most hare-brained schemes, we decided to get it up and running as soon as possible (after all, if we waited too long someone might point out its lack of scientific validity or sanity). and so, this week we're starting a 2-week study, whereby 15 students have been recruited to provide around 15 updates a week about where they're learning. a couple of them have started to provide us with updates ahead of time (if you suffer from continuous partial attention like i do, you can check out http://twitter.com/learningspaces/with_friends to see the updates as they come through - otherwise, i'll post occasional summaries and reflections on this blog along the way).

of course, this is the first time we've ever tried this, so it could all go horribly wrong...but i'm excited anyway to see how it works out :)