The problem like you said, is that everyone, every culture has their own understanding and interpretation of what constitutes ‘equality’. Some cultures don’t even have that concept of ‘equality’ which is a very much Western philosophical ideal. One example I can think of is the Confucian ideal which speaks more about creating harmony in embracing differences. Are these two ideals the same or are they different?

But to me, I try to avoid generalize such kinds of value laden statements and ideals because it is useless. I think it’s futile to argue for a universal ideal such as ‘equality’ precisely because this sort of argument is a kind of ‘violence’ that would eliminate and reduce the fullness, and wonderful complexity of life into something rather ‘dead’. If there is equality, it needs to be lived, experienced, and contested by the praxis of life, in human relationships. I recommend the article title “Why doesn’t this feel empowering’ by Elizabeth Ellsworth (1989) and I quote from her:

‘each affinity group possessed only partial narratives of its oppressions – partial in that they were self-interested and predicated on the exclusion of the voices of others and…the meaning of an individual’s or group’s experience is never self-evident or complete. No one affinity group could ever “know” the experiences and knowledge of other affinity groups or the social positions that were not their own. Nor can social subject…ever fully ‘know’ their own experiences…But this situation was not a failure; it was not something to overcome. Realizing that there are partial narratives that some social groups or cultures have and other can never know, but that are necessary to human survival, is a condition to embrace and use as an opportunity to build a kind of social and educational interdependency that recognizes differences as ‘different strengths’ and as ‘forces for change’ (316, 318)’

As a buddhist practitioner, I try to see concepts and ideas as just concepts and ideas, not larger than life. It’s like, when you see a poor and hungry child being denied of a decent meal, what you do in that situation will determine whether there’s equality and love within you. It is through human relationship that equality and love manifest, you cannot seek it from outside of that. I don’t mean that you cannot spread that around but it always start from within, and not some ‘ideal’ that exist ‘out there’. For example, the Buddha himself never put much emphasis or preach about the great ‘values’, instead he always talks about suffering, and how to end suffering for oneself and others. The minute you start to conceptualize that as something as grand as ‘equality for all’ then, you start to fall prey to the illusion of a simplified world that the ego constructed.

I think to think an “ideal” classroom is impossible. Every design is just to trying to fit the majority. So we have got research on the net-generation, the m-generation, how they like to go online and how they dun like fixture learning space, how they could multi-task, etc etc. But dun forget there are always individual differences. I guess the issue to me is, how the future classroom could help addressing their individual needs?

As to me, my ideal classroom is to have fun people to talk to about the topic. Whether or not there are wireless access, movable furniture……they are not quite the key issue for my best learning experience. Though I cant really live without my laptop now.

If it is the collective persoanlity (culture) then I am not sure how creating Learning Commons could help that far. People do not like to speak or to debate with you anyway.

My crazy thought is…..if there is a Learning Common, there should be some facilitators “on-duty” whom should be talkative, sociable, full of knowledge, and ready to be challenged. I am talking about real people, not ppl behind the computer/internet.

Another crazy thought is, every students should spend like 3 hours per month at the Learning commons. They can do whatever they like there, not neccessarily studying/talking about formal lecture materials. In otherwords, they would not have an excuse that, they are not free to discuss…etc… I found ppl are simply just rushing for other stuffs all the time. Like people have multiple roles like part-time job, full-time studies, dating (thats the most time-consuming hahaha) etc… to handle those roles need a lot of time. And sometimes these roles clashes and you would feel you really want to make use of every minute. In that case ppl does not cherish classmates delaying lecture time. So yea, making the collaboration time compulsory might help them schedule a place for collaboration in their timetable perhaps?!

Many of my friends told me they are too ’shy’ to even write on this blog which is not even an academic blog. The language barrier is also one of the reasons students whose first language is not for example ‘English’.

The challenge is we really need to first gain an understanding of the underlying reasons why people are reluctant to ‘talk’, then, educators need to come up with creative and new ways to help the students in building their confidence and the culture for sharing and open discussions. And these kinds of things cannot be done in one day, especially, if we are talking about deep rooted cultural norms.

Some academics suggest that we can encourage ’side talks’ or chats among students because these kinds of conversation often happens in a less formal environment, with lots of social elements that people will feel comfortable to open up themselves and talk. Such as cafes, and informal gathering places. And for online interactions, I personally think there is a good reason why the FaceBook is so popular as a social networking tool. It does have the kind of loose and relax online environment setup, and people can do many fun and ’silly’ things on it. I heard that when students in the west hear that FaceBook would be used by education people, they didn’t like the idea at all, they felt their social world are being intruded. And that reaction is very interesting and telling.

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 had the experience of doing distant learning via internet for a Qualitative Research course of MEd. Even if the teacher claimed that the participation of the forum discussion would be part of the course assessment, I still seldom left comments on that forum. It was not because I was that lazy or I didn’t have anything to say, the reason was quite complicated. Above all, there was concern that my works would be watched and judged by the teacher and fellow students in front of the computer who were neither totally strangers nor intimate friends, so I felt somewhat forbidden to freely express myself. I felt to be obliged to make the “right” comments, which was very tiring and boring.

I think that you have many wonderful ideas about virtual / distant learning (For example, I love the idea that the library builds up a virtual forum for people to exchange ideas about a common book). Looking forward that your research work can turn the virtual learning into a more exciting and inspring experience for us

Last Thursday I went to the Centennial Campus open forum where the new campus development team introduced their latest work on the project.

Last year, in similar vain, they explained the overall design and incorporated community voices. This time they talked about the more detail design for the buildings and surrounding environments. This include the layout and features of the 3 faculty buildings (arts, social science & law), the surrounding spaces such as the leisure areas, the gardens and the Learning Commons.

I was excited to learn that there’ll be a world class theater installed which can house 1000 audience at one time for art, musical and drama performance, and it is designed as a shared cultural resource for the university and the local communities. The same theater also serves as the largest lecture hall in the whole campus. I’d imagine we will no longer have the problem of running out of seats for talks by internationally renowned speakers, such as Nobel Laureates and world leaders. In fact, this would allow more of such events and functions to be organized.

Another feature I was particularly impressed by was the mini gardens that will be installed in the tiny open areas of the stairwells of the buildings on each floor. This is intended to connect the ‘outside’ natural landscape to the inside of the building, and provide a space of greenery and fresh air for people who dwell in the building.

For the 3 faculty buildings, there will be 1-2 levels above ground that connects the three buildings. The idea was to create a common physical space where the students and faculty members of the 3 faculties would meet freely and perhaps engage in interdisciplinary discussion, and research collaboration. This was also a very novel teaching and learning idea which is considered and incorporated into the physical design of the new campus.

Overall, I hear a lot of design concepts about blending and mixing different environmental elements such as indoor gardens, such as university street where there’d be facilities like bookstores, shops and cafes for bringing the local community living into the campus.

And I’d open a different post for discussion on the Learning Commons which has many interesting issues on its own. What I’d like to briefly say here is that one postgraduate student was so impressed by the idea of the Learning Commons, that he asked if such similar spaces can be replicated in the older campus area so people who do not belong to the 3 faculties can also enjoy the resources.

I thought it was wonderful how new developments have prompted people to re-think about existing spaces and practices. People from other faculties have started to inquire the use of available spaces that are freed up as a result of the new campus development. And someone also mentioned that we need a child care center badly, and I totally agree. I was thrilled to hear the project leader responded positively by saying that the new campus development would certainly have implications on the old campus, and there are plans to renovate the existing spaces. In fact, the library has plan to renovate the ground floor area into a mini Learning Commons as we are speaking.

And finally some teaching staff talked about the use of classrooms and learning spaces and felt that teachers ideas and voices need to be heard and consulted when thinking about the design of such spaces.

My general impression is that the new campus development has been a very open and transparent process. And what’s so important is that it has been very proactive in including voices and ideas from different stake holders, and in engaging the whole university community and the local community as well. This certainly is something that’s never been happened before in the historical development of the HKU campus.