Space Doubt

It was as if by design...

While acknowledging the relationships between learning behaviours and socialising for students, Scott Bennett, Yale University Librarian Emeritus, has some interesting things to say about the design of learning spaces, particularly those which are non-discipline specific, in the following articles, which you can access via Science Direct if your institution has a subscription:

Bennett, S. (2007). Designing for uncertainty: three approaches. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 33 (2), March 2007, pp.165-179.

Bennett, S. (2007). First questions for designing higher education learning spaces. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 33 (1), January 2007, pp.14-26.

The relevance of Bennett's articles for the design of social learning spaces is that they make it clear that the design should focus on the type of learning experience that one wishes to take place. Given the foregoing discussion, this could be anything from unstructured informal learning to highly structured instruction-based learning with group-based or collaborative components.

The first step in designing a social learning space, on this basis, would be to specify more clearly what types of learning experiences are intended by 'social learning' and how they fit together in a given spatial design.