DesigningLearningSpaces
Education 303X

People/Organizations

• In the design of learning spaces, you need to remember the following groups of people (and all the varieties in and between each group):

• Each group has different attention spans, needs different methods of engagement, and has different cognitive load capacities.

'Deb' This is a nice insight about cognitive load capacities and how it might influence learning. I think your learners were definitely captured on the board of brainstorm during class, however, your comment about different needs of these learners was not. So thanks.

Tensions

• There are so many different categories of peoples with differing skills and abilities. In designing a learning space, do you want to make the space as agreeable to as many different populations as possible or for a target audience? For instance, traditional art museums are definitely designed most for people that enjoy individual silent reflective moments. *The current design disregards all the other types of people in existence
• When/how do designers decide on who their target audience is? When do you decide you can’t meet everybody’s needs? Is it all a political game?
• In designs, when do you want to be innovative and when do you want to utilize what’s already in existence? (ie. when do conventional, mainstream, and accepted designs become incorporated into a redesign and when do we deviate from the norm and find something that’s totally revolutionary?)
• There’s got to be something said about best practices. In our world, best designs. Is there always room for improvement? Is there some dictionary of best designs out there for people to reference? Can’t we go from one exhibit to the next and understand its organization instead of having to learn it all over again at every time which increases cognitive load and decreases learning?)

Dan: Best practices is a critical piece of this and something we are trying to achieve in this course. The rubric assignment is designed to start hammering that out. Maybe in future classes we could have as an assignemt for students to find spaces that they think embodybest practices and then try to compare it with the emerging literature in this field.

Learning/Assessment

• As a form of assessment, rubrics provide a defined set of guidelines that distinguish between levels of performance or products.
• Categories of assessment can be: above/exceeds, at, and below standard; level 1, 2, 3, 4
• There are two predominant types of rubrics: holistic (structured around different levels of performance to describe the quality and/or quantity of a task), and analytical (criteria that is further defined and divided by levels of performance)
• The design of a learning space must embed assessment into its design as checks for the effectiveness of that learning space – whether users are effectively interacting with and in the space.
• Assessing a learning space can be done through observations of people’s interaction with the space.
• If using technology, the technology can be embedded with a monitoring software to report number of users.
• Observations to compare use of a learning space before and after a redesign is also important.
• It’s difficult to assess for what’s going on inside the user’s head unless you give them opportunities to demonstrate their learning (ie. after going through an exhibit, there’s an opportunity for them to reflect their takeaways through art, writings, interviews, etc.)
• Designing a learning that can take place in different forms and again observing how the users use their “learning” and adapt it to the next situation is another way to assess the learning. For instance, let’s say you came up with an innovative design for something as simple as a door. *In the way you designed key elements such as the door handle and designation of hinges, you can see how accurately users interact with the door and given a place with a million doors, you can see how many times they succeeded or failed to use the door correctly. For instance, were there times when they pushed when they should have pulled or vice versa? If so, why did that happen? Why did the initial learning of properly using a door not transfer to another time?

Dan: Nice ideas here. I wonder though, how you would think about ways to leverage people in the space. for exaple, in a classroom, teachers are the ones who are as expert in assessment as anyone else. They are making assessmenst constantly so perhaps we as designers just need to put an extra question in their toolbox to connect learning with space. I think the same approach could be used at any spaces that are staffed.

Processes

• What are normal iterative stages in the design process? (Ie. analysis/research of the situation, brainstorming, storyboarding, prototyping, user testing, reevaluation/redesign, etc.)
• What is a typical time frame in the design/implementation process?
• When is a designer satisfied with the design?

Design Strategies

• Look at advertisements and a wide array of magazines to expand the mind and get out of the box in designs. It’s also a great way to stay current with trends.
• Before doing anything, assess the need.

Metaphors

• The BOX. What’s in and what’s out?
• Tortoise and the hare. When do we want to be a tortoise and when do we want to be a hare. It seems like innovations in technology requires a hare’s pace, but the overall design process seems like it could move at a turtle’s pace from design to implementation.

Dan: I like the tortoise and the hare idea for lots of design processes. I am thinking about how different pieces of the design process move at differnet paces. for example idea generation, iteration, prototyping, even observing and interviewing can happen fast. Funding and building take much longer but wind up being the things that are remembered.