Space and technology as important dimensions in an educational setting

What was revealing to me in our IDEL course was the insight that technology itself can be understood as a player on its own in an educational setting, besides students,  teachers, content and space. Technology is not just a digital instrument, a set of tools, a means of repeating the same thing but in a different way, but a layer that is incorporated into a traditional construct that changes much, if not everything. As far as the role of space is concerned, I think that it is also an element in education that shapes the way it works and offers possibilities. I was more familiar with the importance of space for education in general, since we say that space is „the third pedagogue“, a concept that goes back to the Italian pedagogue Loris Malaguzzi, the founder of the pedagogy of Reggio (in German: „Raum als dritter Pädagoge“). Until now, I have not so much considered technology as an independent actor with which processes can be redesigned to change them for the long term.

Space

Foucault, in his remarks on surveillance and punishment in prisons, pointed out the importance of architecture, how a building spreads respect and deterrence against the outside, as well as demands discipline and obedience against the inside through the mightiness of the walls and bars and the arrangement of social spaces such as individual cells or cells for a few prisoners. There are treatises on the fact that this also applies to schools or universities. So if we look closely, it is true that architecture provides for certain patterns of behaviour and roles in space.

Laurentius de Voltolina, Henry of Germany delivering a lecture to university students in Bologna. Around 1233.

Or here:

Obviously, universities are shaped in a certain way. With the example of an auditorium or a lecture hall everyone knows what will be done there, students listen and the professor talks. All the attention is directed to the front: to the screen and the person lecturing the subject. Traditionally this is not the place where discussions take place, at least not today, with increasing numbers of students. The students sit in close rows and cannot move freely during the lecture. This is no coincidence, because obviously the aim is to force a certain behaviour of the students by furnishing the room: Sitting and listening. Is this not also a form of disciplining, of forcing obedience?

The traditional idea: Everyone learns the same in the same place in brick-and-mortar-schools or institutions for higher education. But now there is a new dimension in our understanding of space: virtual space. The space we can’t see, the space we actually can invent.

Hybrid space

As humans we always move in material space as we know it, our universities we go to, our houses or flats we live in or institutions which possess their buildings in the city or in town.  But we move around also constantly in different social spaces like our families, teams at our workplace or in study groups. If we go back to the image of the lecture hall we see the room (lecture hall) and two experts / lecturers in front of them. They have all the attention. The students are in a social environment ‚university‘ ‚lecture‘ ‚cohort‘ for instance. And there are roles: students, lecturer, expert. In one of the pictures we also see the virtual space through main screen in the back of the photograph, in front of the students where the professor explains the slides or his notes, and through those many second and third screens with the students addressing documents on the internet or taking notes digitally.

Those different spaces together constitute the hybrid space. I already referred to it in an older post. What is exciting is the fact that there are grades of virtuality. The students on the picture above are really in the hybrid middle of all three spaces: material, virtual and social.

To remind us of the graphic I would like to show it here once again:

So where am I on the graph as a student in the Digital education programme at University of Edinburgh? As i am not physically present I access the virtual space if the IDEL programme through the Moodle LMS. Although it is virtual it is a social space where several other persons with their own role have their part in our social interactions. There are my fellow students, I can read their forum entries or their tweets. There is my tutor James with his colleague tutoring the other group, he is giving us our much needed advice and comments our blog posts. And there are the experts of every topic covering the content and guiding us through with assignments or discussions. As offshore students we find ourselves at the intersection of virtual and social space, while we only imagine the real material university of stone and mortar. Nevertheless we are also located somewhere, in some material space scattered around the globe. Tutors and experts are located in Edinburgh I suppose and find themselves in the central hybrid space because of the materiality of the work place.

Technology as the fourth pedagogue

If space is a third pedagogue, technology as a manifestation of virtuality – and therefore virtual space – in an educational setting should be considered a forth pedagogue. Wouldn’t it make sense? The first one is obviously the teacher, as he/she is literally the pedagogue in the room. The second pedagogue is the student as an important actor in the setting and in relationship with the teacher, the space and the virtual environment. The third one is the space and the way it is designed, and the fourth pedagogue or constituent element is technology, in our example the Moodle LMS in combination with our individual blog and twitter.