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Table of Contents of Teaching/Learning
Activities and Spaces
Much of this web site is about
spaces that make certain teaching/learning activities easier:
course level activities.
This page takes it up a level: systems of learning spaces
designed to support innovative degree programs and/or
institutions.
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The first and most striking
example I've seen of a department that had a building renovated
or built to support an innovative (undergraduate) program is the
Department of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering at MIT;
the fact that this is the department where I got my own
bachelor's degree is purely coincidental. Their approach
to engineering education is called
Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate
(CDIO); it's intended to help undergraduates grasp the full
cycle of engineering activity. The department began by focusing
on assessment and faculty development, and then started
developing the new curricular strategy. The third step was
to work closely with Bill Mitchell, former Dean of Architecture
at MIT, and a widening circle of collaborators to create a
renovation plan that would functionally and visually support the
new profile of teaching/learning activities. Flexible new spaces
support brainstorming, design, construction, and testing.
Students working in these spaces can see one another, even
though some activities are on different floors from one another.
Even the once-hidden library is now visible behind a glass wall.
And most of the building is open to undergraduates (who use
keycards) on a 24x7 basis; equipment that requires supervision
is behind separated locked doors. Yet another nice feature:
storage where students can put their work between sessions.
These slides give a
sense of the variety of physical facilities but only hint at how
networking enables students to use resources and people outside
the Institute as they work and learn.
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The University of Tennessee, Knoxville's Science and Engineering
Research Building was instrumented during its construction
so that the building itself becomes a laboratory instrument that
can report on changes in stress, strain, temperature, vibration.
and other variables.
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Another, quite different example
of a building that creates a certain kind of context - a
specific atmosphere - is MIT's
Stata Center.
The building violates almost every expectation; it seems quite
appropriate as home for an interdisciplinary cluster of research
and teaching activities including faculty from brain and
cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and other fields, as
well as the World Wide Web consortium. This a building
that provides a vivid example for its occupants of thinking
outside the box!"
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Counter-example: What
kinds of spaces are counter-productive in this regard. One very
common example are spaces that are sterile, spaces with little
or no connection to the lives of the students, faculty,
programs, and institution(s) that use them. Unfortunately most
virtual spaces seem to fall into this category; except for
(maybe) a logo here and there, the virtual space provides little
or no connection outside the course: to the professions for
which the students are being educated, to the world outside, to
the history of the programs and institutions that use them.
I hope and expect to see this change.
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Table of Contents of Teaching/Learning
Activities and Spaces
Stephen C. Ehrmann, Updated
October 31, 2004 |
