Herbert Thomas (2009) British Journal of Educational Technology

The physical learning environment is an integral part of the learning process. Traditional learning spaces imply a certain type of teaching and management strategies and can constrain the various possible types of learning. Traditional lecture halls do not contain affordances to promote active learning: “engaged learning is an emergent property of learning spaces and environments that are designed to provide affordances that actively encourage such engagement” (503). Learning does not occur in formally designed spaces but rather takes place informally; this notion liberates learning from its traditional boxed-in nature.

Design of learning spaces can shape the learning experiences that take place within that environment. Learning spaces that encourage active learning reflect the vision of the university and can heighten student desire to learn. This is only possible if teaching emerges as an integral aspect in the design of these spaces. Designing these spaces with teaching in mind can lead towards a “built pedagogy” supported by educational technology, not to deliver content but to provide “opportunities for informal content manipulation, creation, and delivery” (504).

Considering “built pedagogy” one realizes that learning spaces includes both physical and virtual spaces and accepts an increasingly blurred division between the two. Moving forward, 21st century educators will have to give equal consideration to the design of virtual and mixed learning environments. Like physical environments, virtual environments differ in the affordances they provide; learning management systems often fall out of favor when compared with internet-based social spaces due to differences in what they afford users to do. These social spaces exemplify “dynamic complex systems” (506) and ecological terminology often helps to describe their characteristics (ecosystem, learning ecologies, autopoiesis). Connectivist terminology (Siemens, 2004) has also illuminated the nature of these spaces situating them within a learning ecology with organized domains of knowledge. In this view, learning is a process that occurs across time and space “with shifting core elements”. Inherent in this notion is that “learning and space are inextricably linked…the particular kind of learning that takes place in a particular space (adaptive, complex, and dynamic as it is) is an emergent property of that space” and the pedagogy employed to encourage an active, transformative, empowering learning experience [my addition] (508). A finite definition of learning cannot exist – new learning styles and types of learning will emerge as new spaces and pedagogies are used to engage students.

So how does one design a space for “learnings” (508)? “Learning spaces have to be planning on the strength the different kinds of learning will only emerge once these spaces are used by students… [with] the knowledge that the full range of the types of learning that they enable cannot be envisaged at the outset” (509). This will require a re-engineering of the design process and rather than planning for the structure of the space, “we can only plan for complex learning ecologies” and the structure of the space itself “has to be a function of the adaptive complex system that it serves” (509). These spaces must be flexible and fluid with thought given to creating various affordances to foster specific skills and make certain pedagogies possible [my addition]. Thomas draws on Kaplan and Kaplan’s four “cognitive determinants of environmental preference: coherence, complexity, legibility, and mystery” (509-10). The fourth, mystery, links to Graetz’s (2006) desire to create ‘enchanting’ learning environments, which are so because of their “’situatedness’ within cognitive, affective, social, cultural, historical, and philosophical contexts” (510). A learning ecology should incorporate and situated itself within the full range of these contexts.

Citations:

Thomas, H. (2009). Learning Spaces, learning environments and the ‘dis’placement of learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 41(3), 502-511.

Gratez, K. A. (2006). The Psychology of Learning Environments. EDUCAUSE, 41(6), 60-75.

Seimens, G. (2004). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. http://www.elearningspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm