One of the new skills that teachers will need to master in the future will be the ability to manage virtual learning spaces. Learning always takes place in the mind of the learner, but the formalised activities of learning have never been confined to the classroom. The use of web based resources and networked computers enable students to enter worlds previously inaccessible, allowing them to explore within that imagined world we call 'cyberspace'. These virtual learning spaces are often shared spaces, enabling symbolic interactions of all types to take place, the simplest through text alone, the most exotic through a combination of text, icons, sound, graphics, animation and video. Such imagined worlds can also be very flexible, in that they represent spaces where the student is not constrained by the traditional boundaries of space and place. Ultimately, virtual learning spaces can be very different from anything the teacher or the student may previously have encountered, and the management of these spaces will depend to a great extent on the imagination and flair of teachers.And yet the management of learning environment is already a core skill practised by all teachers in schools and lecturers in colleges and universities. Learning spaces in conventional education are the classrooms, laboratories and libraries that are located in the physical boundaries of the parent institute. They are bounded by walls, rules and conventions. In the virtual learning environment, there are no boundaries, because there are no physical classrooms, laboratories or libraries. Although in spaces such as Second Life, we see constrained thinking in the form of virtual classroom and lecture halls, with doors, windows and roofs, this need not be they way we represent learning spaces in virtual worlds. Creative and disruptive educators can think of much better ways to represent learning spaces. They refuse to perpetuate old ways of thinking in new environments.
Management of the virtual learning space then becomes a more esoteric proposition. Students may be studying in a variety of locations, such as their bedrooms, the launderette, the bus, train, or even on a submarine in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean! Wherever they study, the management of student activities, learning resources and technologies will be of fundamental importance to the success of any online learning. And we all have our own notions of personal space and place.
My sense of place is centred upon the spaces that are familiar to me, especially those over which I maintain some ownership. These include my home (very much so, especially my bedroom!), my car (about two or three times each day during travelling), my office (probably less so - I moved my office a mile across campus recently and it's surprising how many items you lose!), and the classrooms and teaching rooms I work in. The latter is perhaps the place that offers me the least sense of personal place and ownership, but when I am leading a teaching session I am never the less operating within very familiar territory and this gives me a sense of comfort and ease. Erving Goffman's ideas about the presentation of self are useful here to aid our understanding of place and space: I will have a defined area to operate within, including a kind of script to follow (lesson plan, aims of the session), a role to perform (teacher, facilitator, mentor), and a set of props that I can call upon to assist me in this role, (white board and pens, projector and laptop computer, my slides and games, and a range of other technologies and audio visual aids). These help me to maintain my sense of space and place, as well as allowing me to perform my role effectively within this location. When one or more of these is not accessible, or broken, I tend to lose a little of the sense of space I normally occupy!
My home town of Plymouth, in South West England, is also my birth place. I live here with my wife and three children, and there are several other close family members and friends living within a few miles of my home. The city of Plymouth therefore represents a familiar environment and affords me ownership of place and a sense of belonging, which manifests itself in a range of habituated behaviours. These include regular attendance at local events including church services; extended travel throughout the area; extensive knowledge of the locale; regular patronage of many local businesses with associated loyalty schemes; and support of my local soccer team, Plymouth Argyle Football Club (Although I have rarely attended home games in the past few years due to the pressures of work, I still consider myself a supporter). If I was forced to leave Plymouth for some reason, I would no doubt experience a sense of loss - of being uprooted, and perhaps an element of unease, or even a sense of 'bereavement' because my familiar spaces would no longer be immediately available for me. My sense of continuity of space and place would be disrupted, and for me this would be slightly uncomfortable.
Each of us has a sense of place and space which is based upon our feelings of habituation, familiarity and personal history, as well as our level of ease with the environment. As I have already said, I believe that continuity is an important factor in our sense of place. Even nomadic people who are constantly on the move take with them a range of familiar things including their tents, or caravans, in which they keep many of the items with which they are accustomed. This promotes the sense of continuity for them - a sort of constancy within an ever changing environment.
We know that for learners using technology, the learning environment is not only the classroom or library, but may also include any other location. The place where discussion takes place is no longer restricted to the coffee area or the local pub (although it might be if fellow students live within close geographical proximity to each other and can arrange convenient times to meet). In technology enhanced learning, the sense of one's space and place has shifted into a virtual learning and communication space - the imagined world of cyberspace. Some of the best multi-media designers try to make this easy for online learners, by providing them with a screen architecture that is easily navigable and attractive without being too 'fussy' or cluttered for example. The spatial metaphors such as 'room' and 'café' are used to try to bring some sense of familiar space and place to the learner. Perhaps this is why Second Life designers persist in creating classrooms as learning spaces. Still, even allowing for the guile and skill of web designers and e-tutors, for some there may remain a sense of inertia, a sense of not knowing how to belong or where to place yourself. Trying to get a handle on this can for many be quite a problem. What about social interaction? What about support for when problems arise, or if the technology fails, or if there are no obvious signposts? And of course, the question that many psychologists are interested in: how different is the behaviour of students in these kinds of imagined worlds?
My home town of Plymouth, in South West England, is also my birth place. I live here with my wife and three children, and there are several other close family members and friends living within a few miles of my home. The city of Plymouth therefore represents a familiar environment and affords me ownership of place and a sense of belonging, which manifests itself in a range of habituated behaviours. These include regular attendance at local events including church services; extended travel throughout the area; extensive knowledge of the locale; regular patronage of many local businesses with associated loyalty schemes; and support of my local soccer team, Plymouth Argyle Football Club (Although I have rarely attended home games in the past few years due to the pressures of work, I still consider myself a supporter). If I was forced to leave Plymouth for some reason, I would no doubt experience a sense of loss - of being uprooted, and perhaps an element of unease, or even a sense of 'bereavement' because my familiar spaces would no longer be immediately available for me. My sense of continuity of space and place would be disrupted, and for me this would be slightly uncomfortable.
Each of us has a sense of place and space which is based upon our feelings of habituation, familiarity and personal history, as well as our level of ease with the environment. As I have already said, I believe that continuity is an important factor in our sense of place. Even nomadic people who are constantly on the move take with them a range of familiar things including their tents, or caravans, in which they keep many of the items with which they are accustomed. This promotes the sense of continuity for them - a sort of constancy within an ever changing environment.
We know that for learners using technology, the learning environment is not only the classroom or library, but may also include any other location. The place where discussion takes place is no longer restricted to the coffee area or the local pub (although it might be if fellow students live within close geographical proximity to each other and can arrange convenient times to meet). In technology enhanced learning, the sense of one's space and place has shifted into a virtual learning and communication space - the imagined world of cyberspace. Some of the best multi-media designers try to make this easy for online learners, by providing them with a screen architecture that is easily navigable and attractive without being too 'fussy' or cluttered for example. The spatial metaphors such as 'room' and 'café' are used to try to bring some sense of familiar space and place to the learner. Perhaps this is why Second Life designers persist in creating classrooms as learning spaces. Still, even allowing for the guile and skill of web designers and e-tutors, for some there may remain a sense of inertia, a sense of not knowing how to belong or where to place yourself. Trying to get a handle on this can for many be quite a problem. What about social interaction? What about support for when problems arise, or if the technology fails, or if there are no obvious signposts? And of course, the question that many psychologists are interested in: how different is the behaviour of students in these kinds of imagined worlds?
Image source by Serendigity
Imagined worlds by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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