..... EXPLORING CONCEPTUAL, PERSONAL, SOCIAL, PHYSICAL AND VIRTUAL SPACES FOR LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Learning as process

I find myself again and again returning to Lennie Scott-Webber's seminal work on learning space design from 2004 in In Sync: Enviromental Behaviour Research and the Design of Learning Spaces. Whilst I have some difficulty with much behaviourist methodology (where it reduces diverse perceptions and experiences to the most simplistic cause and effect relationships) I think her outlines of learning give one of the best descriptions of the different kinds of processes involved, and their associated spaces:

Environments for Delivering Knowledge (formal, one to many)
Environments for Applying Knowledge (practice-based settings)
Environments for Creating Knowledge (development and process-based)
Environments for Communicating Knowledge (interactive, information-sharing)

I had the great privilege to meet Lennie in October last year, as part of a learning spaces in higher education book-writing project organised by LiHE . She and colleagues also gave us a tour of Steelcase University, part of the furniture manufacturer, where she works.