Learning Spaces – 1

Cognitive learning is hard, hard brain work, whether you’re 8 or 80.  Spaces where you plan to learn new material, whether they’re a home schoolroom, a home office, or a classroom outside a home need to be carefully designed or instead of learning about trigonometry or butterflies or rules for running effective meetings, students will be coming up with new ways to pass the time until they can stop their lessons and move on to something they actually want to do.

Just having a dedicated learning space at home or elsewhere sends a powerful message that encourages people to focus on learning.  When a group “spends” space on something, it signals to itself and others what its priorities are, and group members almost always want to excel at whatever is important to those it respects and feels socially tied to (this message was, however, not clearly transmitted to that awful kid in your fifth grade classroom who spent the school day making snide comments about whatever is being taught, and is now in prison).

Educational spaces need to be appropriately maintained, nothing “says” “we don’t care” faster than peeling or chipped paint.  Also, to succeed people must feel that the messages sent by classrooms signal that they are welcome.  In a classic study, women were less likely to enroll in computer science classes because things such as images in posters/artwork on walls signaled a “space for men” not a “space for all.”

A space for learning has to be a place where student minds have to be lively enough to effectively work with the material they’re working with but not so subdued that people feel so relaxed that mind wandering far, far away to thoughts of out-of-class adventures is a real possibility.

Learning spaces are complex tech zones now. And when that tech isn’t working as planned—whether it’s the Wi-Fi or the electronic whiteboard or the Zoom connection or something else that’s failed—students will either literally not be able to learn because they can’t see/hear etc. lesson content or so stressed by their situation that they’re likely to get more useful insights on geometry or how to develop a meaningful budget by lying down to take a nap than continuing with class.  Keeping technology purring along is not our focus here at The Space Doctors; in a learning space when that tech fails, there’s not much we can suggest to overcome the resulting stress levels.

Since technology seems to drive modern education, supporting it drives learning space success.  If students are expected to write on an electronic white board so notes made can be emailed to all participants, all participants need to be able to be able to see that whiteboard, whether they’re participating electronically or in real life.

Many students today are not present in a classroom during instructional periods but are present electronically.  Students participating electronically, need to carefully manage the environments people see around and behind them, as discussed in this article.

It is inevitable that camaraderie will build among people physically present in a classroom as a result of how human brains process information and that people participating only electronically won’t be full members of the class click, no matter how witty or smart they may be.  People in the same place communicate in richer, more nuanced ways than is currently possible electronically, as reviewed in this article. To blend the electronically present with the physically present as much as possible, it’s great when those electronic faces are about the same size as the heads of those physically present and worked into the same seating configuration of those who are present, if at all possible.  That means if students are seated in a circle, that circle seems to extend into the surface where images are being projected and the faces shown are placed as if they were in the physical circle.  To avoid there being a tightly bonded group of in-class students and distant students all can be required to participate electronically.  This results in very low levels of class cohesiveness and “spirit” among all students.  This is likely to be particularly undesirable among students in professional classes who hope to form bonds with classmates that will be handy in the future.