The Learning Commons
November 30, 2007 by nicol
One of the main features of the new campus is the creation of space for the “Learning Commons”. It’s a rather new concept within higher education institutes, but basically has emerged in the recent years together with many of the reform and rethinking about what higher education should be like in today’s world and looking ahead in the future. It is basically to re-examine teaching and learning activities as they are occurring and changing now, and taking that out of the traditional classroom learning framework. To me the biggest difference from the old types of learning spaces is that these new learning spaces have a clear design objective which is to create environment conducive to collaborative learning styles and social activities. Most of them are also designed as spaces that can be operated on a 24/7 basis, taking into the consideration of the highly irregular learning and working hours of today’s student population. We have to understand that students do not only learn during their normal classroom hours.
Many students after a class or a lecture would have to go off and spend double or triple or more of that time to engage in group and individual learning. They are often doing some kind of research like activities, for example, searching for extra information and reading material, have brainstorming and discussions with peers, doing handy or craftsmen work sometimes etc.
Actually, today’s learning activities has a huge learning by doing component, such as projects and group works, as well as field work and internship programs.
And internationalized universities such as HKU, have a diversified student body, meaning, not only in terms of different ethnic groups, but at the same time, different age and social background students, whether undergraduate or postgraduate, full time or part time. They all have very different learning styles and work schedules.
Another important feature and the final one I want to mention here is the hybrid-ness of the learning environment of a Learning Commons. By that I mean two levels, one is the highly embeddedness of information and communication technologies within these spaces. If you will, it is both a virtual and physical learning space, where people will be using a lot of the IT facilities and electronic resources, together with their own mobile devices, along side physical activities such as face to face discussion. And second, it is a space that combines the learning and social/cultural elements, such as spaces for people to relax, eat, drink, sleep, socialize and of course learning too.
Photo courtesy: Brock University website:http://www.library.brocku.ca/learningcommons/?page_id=9
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I have some questions, how to maintain 24/7 basis service efficiently? How to help student get good use of it? How to satisfy students various and sometimes conflicting demands?
So when will this new campus be ready to use? You will need to wait until it’s in use to collect data?
The new campus construction will be completed in 2011 or 2012 according to official record. Meanwhile the library is going to refurbish its ground floor area for a mini ‘Learning Commons’ and hopefully it’s gonna happen soon.
I also know that there’s been suggestion to refurbish the education library area and turn it into a faculty ‘Learning Commons’. I think this sort of things are emerging, it’s just we haven’t been paying too much attention to them.
In fact, the library does have an area next to the Star Bucks that’s called the ‘Learning Center’ if I remembered correctly. It serves the similar purpose. So I will probably start collecting some preliminary data from there.
Lucia, you’ve asked some good and valid questions. I have not much idea about the answers to these questions, but that’s what I need to find out for my study. And especially for the last question, do you have something in mind, like the kind of conflicts you’d imagine could be happening in such spaces?
The 24/7 things is really catered for the kinds of student life style in today’s campus. I’m not sure how that’s gonna be good for energy saving measures or the environment though. That’d be a big concern for people like me, who are environmental conscious of certain social and technological applications.
And how to get student to make good use of it. Wow, that’s the central part of my study I guess. So far, I only see plans to install the hardwares, like furnitures, food stalls, couches, table, books, computers, etc. There’s not much talk about the pedagogical use of these resources, and whether the teacher, tutor or helpers will be put there for learning purposes. My concern is whether like you said, people will use the space for learning or simply for social gathering. But the activities they do will be inevitably connected with their other learning activities. So I imagine, if a group of student would have a lot of project work to do for their classes, they’d certainly benefit from having such a well resource and designed space to carry out group learning activities.
I think it might also be interesting to look into the blended nature of the “learning commons”. It’s a space where students gather together physically. But at the same time, they bring their laptops or using computers there. The Internet opens another dimension – the virtual dimension – to the physical space. They can talk to their peers face-to-face, and chatting with others on Internet.