Social Learning Space
The design of learning spaces is now acknowledged as having a powerful impact on student learning and engagement (Kuh et al., 2005) but is often a forgotten element in pedagogic considerations. Since January 2006 for three years ASKe in conjunction with the Reinvention CETL has sponsored an annual 'Space Symposium' to bring people together to discuss learning space design and its effect on student learning. These symposia have proved to be extremely popular as interest in learning space design, and in particular social learning space, has gained momentum in Higher Education in the last few years.
As a Centre for Excellence in assessment on occasion people have asked why ASKe is so interested in learning space design! There are three steps to the argument:
- An indispensable condition for students to do well in academic assessment is the need for them to hold the same understanding of quality as their tutors (Sadler, 1987; 2008). However, what makes for an excellent history essay, dissertation or management consultancy report is frustratingly difficult to articulate completely.
- Tacit understandings of assessment standards and criteria (those parts of understanding that we can’t articulate in words or writing) are shared through social processes and more effectively in close academic communities. So it is perhaps not surprising that large scale research (involving 25,000 students) in the US found that the environmental variable that is the most significant predictor of student academic success is student involvement as represented by density of student/student and student/staff interactions (Astin, 1997).
- Consequently, ASKe is very interested in cultivating learning communities in which students are engaged and involved. Learning spaces, particularly social learning spaces are an important element in cultivating community giving students the ‘affinity space’ (Gee, 2006) to interact both formally and informally with their peers and their tutors.
Historically, early universities provided space both for quiet individual contemplation and for informal interaction. However, in more recent times, perhaps due to limited resources, most new university buildings have been more functional in nature focused on formal activities such as new classrooms, libraries, research facilities etc. Social learning space underpins more informal interaction as it brings together both social and learning activities providing a platform for an increased sense of community and effective collaborative work.
Explore our innovative social learning space at Oxford Brookes’ Wheatley Campus that ASKe both funded and designed.
References
Astin, A. (1997) What Matters in College? Four Critical Years Revisited, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Gee, J.P. (2006) Semiotic social spaces and affinity spaces: from The Age of Mythology to today’s schools, in: D. Barton and K. Tusting (Eds) Beyond Communities of Practice: Language, Power and Social Context, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Kuh, G. D. & Hu, S. (2001), The Effects of Student-Faculty Interaction In the 1990s
The Review of Higher Education – Vol. 24, Iss. 3., pp. 309-332
Sadler, D. R. (1987) Specifying and Promulgating Achievement Standards, Oxford Review of Education, 13, 191–209.
