Nicole's Page
Reflection on the Readings as they Relate to our Project
The Nicolopolou and Cole reading from last week demands that we ask ourselves some very difficult questions. Since New Song Do is supposed to be an incredibly multicultural city with only 10% of the population being from the host culture, what will the culture of collaborative learning be? When you are trying to design learning into an institution that is so new that it might not have a culture yet, how can you assess whether or not your learning intervention will have "institutional fit"? Do we even have to worry about these tensions in the context of a completely new city/culture being born? Our design may just be part of the birth process.
The Brown reading ("Learning Space Design Theory and Practice") helped me begin to develop some answers to these questions. The table shows us how different learning principles may be applied through IT. This reminded me that we DO know that an important part of the culture in New Song Do will be the fast and innovative technology. We conducted a focus group last week and learned that in Seoul you can do almost everything from your mobile phone. Our group has not yet decided what aspect of the city to design learning into. We do not know whether we want to design a physical learning space or a virtual learning space. The Brown reading shows us that there are different ways to achieve certain learning principals through each medium. We will need to take that into account as well as "cultural, social and institutional factors" that may influence learning.
Dan: Good questions raised about institutional fit with a project where institutions and culture are so new. I also like thinking of yoru design as part of the birth process. In that vein I'd urge you to keep flexibility near the top of your list so as the culture and instiututions go through some growing pains, your spaces can still be relevant. As in, if it turns out that suddenly a bunch of native Chinese speakers show up that spaces and technologies can accommodate using a character set in the thousands of items. Might not be the clearest example, but just want to raise the idea that a little flexibility can go a long way.
Free Write 4/17
The reading that most interested me was the one on Knowledge Displays in Kosrae. I was most intrigued by the fluidity of how smart or stupid people were viewed as in different spheres. I am still struggling to apply this to our design of learning spaces. How can the ideas in this reading be physically manifested in a learning space? Let's take the card game for instance. Things that affected the card game as a learning environment included: the seating arrangement of the players, which players were involved, how clean the space was, how the baby would be taken care of during the game, where they were sitting (on the floor vs. on a table), how the participants viewed each other and invited each other to participate. Some of these things can be addressed by physical manipulation of the space, but the last thing is very dependent on the participants/learners themselves.
Dan Gilbert: I think you've highlighted an important tension that we'll explore throughout the quarter, namely how much impact can space have on long term social relationships. Its one thing for a museum/zoo/park to force people into a particular interaction for a minute or so or even a classroom over the course of a year. But relationships in culture/family etc. are more powerful than space. In this reading, I was also struck by the impact of a small community. While the author highlights different kinds of communities and different situations where people are considered smart/stupid, they are also living in a reality where there just aren't that many people - they are on an island far from large populations. Do hte residents instabtly change their perception of someone because the context is different?
I found the Lave & Wenger reading to be really dense and difficult to read. I hope we unpack it a lot in this session.
Dan Gilbert This is indeed a dense piece and it is our goal to spend more time discussing it on April 24. Please push us on this if we move too fast.
Reflection on an on-campus learning space...
I eat at a co-op on campus named Hammarskjold. You wouldn't think a co-op kitchen could be a learning space, but you would be surprised. In Hammarskjold's kitchen, learning opportunities can be found in the various signs that are posted on almost every wall and window. I am particularly interested in the signs posted above the sink that tell you the proper way to clean your dishes. The signs, in order of steps, are: "#1: Spray off excess food with the sprayer", "#2: Soap both sides of your dishes", "#3: Rinse (you don't want your food to taste like soap!)", "#4: Place in Hobart tray". (A Hobart is a restaurant style sanitizer, by the way). All these signs are illustrated and very colorful. They read from right to left because that is the way the process physically takes place. You soap and rinse your dish in the sink to the right and then place the clean dishes in the Hobart tray which is to the left. The placement of the signs is slightly problematic because people don't usually read from right to left. When washing my dishes, I often find myself only looking at the 2nd or 3rd sign, and completely miss the first because it's way off to the right. The last sign is also sometimes obscured by stacked plates. Also, the signs are below eye level and don't catch your attention right away. This is a problem for first time dishwashers at Hammarskjold because, they might miss a crucial step and end up putting an unwashed or soapy dish in the Hobart tray. (This is bad because "THE HOBART IS NOT A DISHWASHER!" as another illustrated sign demonstrates).
Some positives: the signs are illustrated, so there is visual as well as verbal instruction on how to wash dishes. The signs are not too verbose, which may prevent people from reading them through all the way. One of the signs (#3) gives you a reason for rinsing.
In reality, the signs are more for visual reinforcement of behaviors that are taught to new residents or visitors of the Hammarskjold community. They are not the only things responsible for teaching people how to wash their dishes properly. What usually happens is at the beginning of every quarter, new residents are required to take a tour of the kitchen which is given by one of the Kitchen Managers. During this tour, residents learn proper dish-washing/Hobarting etiquette, where the chocolate chips are hidden, etc. Residents are then asked to be responsible for teaching their guests how to Hobart properly after they come over for a meal. In this way, the Hammarskjold kitchen is a community of learning.
One way to assess whether or not the skill has been learned is to look at the Hobart tray to see how many dishes are clean and how many are still greasy with food. That may indicate that some people do not know how to clean their dishes properly, but that might also be an indication of how lazy people are despite their knowledge of the correct dish washing process. What needs to be taught therefore is why it matters that you clean your plate off properly. I think that most of the time, this is something that instructional signs or a lecturing Kitchen Manager cannot really teach you. You have to experience it for yourself: once you've grabbed a plate out of the cupboard to find that there's still a bit of old food stuck to it you'll realize how important it is to clean your dishes properly.
Dan Gilbert Great example. I particularly enjoyed your observation about the cognitive dissonance of reading from right to left, mapping a learning process onto a "technical proces" I like your assessment idea and I also like the fact, that like the church on Kosrae, you are probably assessed as an entire group. I'm guessing the Kitchen Manager would say things like "WE haven't been doing a good job with the Hobart" or "WE need to do a better job of washing soap off" etc. Or, are individuals singled out? Another assessment opportunity would be taking the signs down altogether periodically then putting them back up. A little risky, but I wonder if it might change behavior, or increase levels of concentration if the one piece of a familiar environment was unpredictable. Nice work.
Karin Chapin - I like the idea of learning in an everyday place, as part of everyday life. Two questions come to mind:
I'm beginning to feel as though I'm proposing way too much "learning" (text, information overload) and I wonder what the ideal balance is? I myself wouldn't want to have to deal with "busy" walls everywhere, all the time.