Places to study?

As part of my Russian trip, I went on a visit of the Moscow State University - built in the 1950s by Stalin (as one of his infamous Gothic skyscrapers) - which was designed as a self-contained campus with accommodation for 6, 000 students, on Sparrow Hills just to the south of the Moskva river.

I was taken around by students who were well aware of the building's history (it was built by prisoners), but also felt the importance of both remembering and continuing its ethos of good academic education. They showed us these original desks - still in use throughout and facing a traditional chalk blackborad - and said how much they were motivated by sitting where previous generations of scholars had learnt.

For some reason this reminded me of a recent summary of learning spaces at Cambridge University, written as part of the Learning Landscape project, funded by the Higher Education Academy. The learning experience at somewhere like Cambridge is just so different to, for example, one of the ex-polytechnics; both because of the postive echoes of its academic history and because of the range and type of spaces available across both accommodation (the Colleges) and university departments.

As author Dr. Catherine Howell writes, "Colleges are important to students because they provide a spectrum of critical study resources - including study space - within easy reach, and because they are learning and social communities. These communities are especially valued by undergraduate students in view of the study workload, the high-stakes assessment system and the relatively short Cambridge terms, all of which contribute to the '24-hour' work culture." (Howell 2008:4). For nme, this is yet another warning against the glib generalities of 'formal' versus 'informal' learning spaces.

As the two main CETLD learning spaces researchers, Hilary and I have been talking a lot recently about what is already available, in terms of appropriate conceptual frameworks, research methods and taxonomies. Hilary has been reviewing the many good practice case studies of contemporary learning spaces in post-compulsory education. There are lots of interesting examples but also some on-going problems: potential citation distortion (where the same examples are referenced again and again without much checking on the validity of the data proffered); difficulties of finding out what is happening across the sector, intersecting with varying degrees of promotion by individual universities and projects; and – because of the recent focus on technology-rich and informal learning spaces – a tendency to ignore (or fail to effectively classify/compare and contrast) the range of developments taking place across the variety of learning spaces from lecture theatres, to labs, to studios to research centres.

In the latter area, for example, Woods Bagot have done an interesting ‘study tour’ of advanced learning institutes, aimed at bringing together researchers from different disciplines; of which the MIT Stata Center (pictured above), designed by Frank Gehry Associates, is probably one of the most famous/infamous.

These are very relevant to CETLD because it brings together HE institutions with non-university partners. Who, for example, is analysing and comparing museum education spaces with HE versions? Well, us I hope!

Experiencing formal learning

Recently had the opportunity to visit art and architecture courses at the Academy of Architecture in Moscow. It puts the debates about a formal -to- informal learning in the UK and elsewhere into a certain sort of perspective. Both architectural and art students still spend a considerable amount of their early training copying classical examples (busts, sculptures, columns and entablatures) through measured drawings, meticulously drawn and then shadowed in ink and wash; usually several months for one drawing.

We haven't done this in the UK since the 1960s, so it feels very dated. But it also makes one think about why the Russians still do it, and we don't - and what the impacts are on the students learning.

Engage with Engage!

Had a fantastic time last week at the Engage International Summer School in Kilkenny (with a trip to Dublin thrown in), entitled Shifting Perspectives - positioning learning at the centre of the gallery. Engage is a membership organisation representing gallery, art and education professionals in the UK and worldwide. Gallery educators, curators and artists explored both where 'learning' sits within the wide range of institutional step-ups represented; and what learning means or should mean in a gallery/museums/collections/archives situation.

It was very stimulating for me to be working and talking with people who share many concerns but must also engage different audiences and have other sorts of cultural baggage and a very different history around, and context for, their various ideas, attitudes and practices. It throws a kind of useful questioning look at the assumptions we have in art and design in higher education. The amount of energy discussing the problems and sucesses of a variety of institutional frameworks was also insightful - something again that seems to me to be less explicitly considered in the university sector.

Image shows workshop underway in Kilkenny Castle photo: Jos Boys