Understanding the digital learning space
‘Thinking the term “learning spaces” as something we do (stage, perform, enact), rather than something we have (infrastructure) affords acknowledging the multiplicity, mutability and mutual inclusivity of spatial and pedagogic practices’ (Mulcahy, 2018, p. 27).
A learning space can be conceptualised as something more dynamic and complex than just physical infrastructure: ‘learning spaces are staged, performed or enacted in relations between bodies and material objects, including physical spaces’ (Mulcahy, 2018, p. 14). If we think about learning spaces from a socio-material perspective, an individual’s learning space is not just their physical surroundings, but a ‘connected and co-determining’ (Lamb et al., 2021) network of relations between human and non-human actors.
Okay, but what does that actually mean? Well, let’s think about it this way: digital technologies have blurred the boundaries between the physical space of traditional classrooms and online learning environments. So now we have a learning space constituted by human actors (teachers and students, as always) and non-human actors (technology tools, learning management systems or learning experience platforms, as well as students’ homes, coffee shops, buses, and anywhere else they choose to learn).
This construction moves us away from binary distinctions of learning spaces, such as:
Formal vs. informal
Face-to-face vs. online
Digital vs. real
Human vs. technological
When we conceptualise learning spaces in this way, we allow students to ‘negotiate learning spaces beyond the bricks-and-mortar campus’ (Lamb et al., 2021). Although digital technologies have blurred the boundaries between traditional and online learning spaces, the conceptualisation of digital learning spaces goes beyond just technological tools or mediums. Digital learning spaces ‘merge with users’ physical surroundings to produce lived learning spaces’ (Singh et al., 2021, p. 134).
The construction of learning spaces, then, is an assemblage of both physical spaces and digital technologies. There is a dialectical relation between the construction and enactment of digital technologies and learning spaces; they are independent entities, but within the social structure of education, they both shape, and are shaped by, each other (Lamb et al., 2021). In the same way, there is a dialectical relation between structure and agency in the negotiation of learning spaces; learning spaces are created through an assemblage of wider structures, such as ‘university strategy, government policy, commercialisation’ (Lamb et al., 2021) as well as agency decisions, such as the construction of personal learning spaces or the choice of hardware. In this way, the learning space is continuously under construction, shifting and moving in response to changes within the complex socio-material network of actors in which it sits.
Negotiating learning spaces in universities
Digital technologies have helped to re-conceptualise learning spaces as more fluid, more nuanced, more uncertain, and certainly more complex than previously considered. At this juncture, we have the chance to really think about what kind of university we want to cultivate and construct postdigital learning spaces through the bridging of the physical and the virtual, giving ‘rise to a prominence of hybridity’ (Lamb et al., 2021).
The affordances of digital technology allow learners to be ‘empowered by technologies and devices that allow them to roam and select many different kinds of spaces and settings in which to study and learn’ (Nordquist & Lain, 2015, p. 340), providing increased possibilities for choosing spaces that adhere to individual learner preference. Whilst one student may like to study in a coffee shop, another may enjoy the space of their own living room; digital technologies have provided the opportunity to move the learning space away from the confines of institutional infrastructure and into the eclectic spaces offered by the wider world.
As wonderful as this flexibility can be, there is also a danger of alienation made possible by the vastness of the virtual; in their study on students’ narration of engagement in HE online environments, O’Shea et al., found that ‘by far the biggest obstacle to feeling engaged was a sense of being different to on-campus students’ (2015, p. 51). They concluded their paper by arguing:
‘If universities intend to grow their online numbers then it is necessary to replicate the learning experience for those students who are located in a virtual environment […] to avoid online learners identifying themselves as “second-class citizens” or “just an online student”’ (O’Shea et al., 2015, p. 55).
Whilst time and space are re-defined through digital technologies, and students are afforded the possibility of mobility and individual preference, there is a need to ‘critically assess the alignment between the curriculum and physical learning spaces’ (Nordquist & Laing, 2015, p. 342) to ensure that the negotiation of learning spaces does not become desperation to feel included.
Critically assessing this alignment would help to break the boundaries and binaries that have separated the ‘traditional’ learning space and the ‘digital’ learning space, bringing together consideration of the pedagogical, technological, and the social to allow for construction, enactment, and negotiation of more dynamic and malleable learning spaces.
REFERENCES
Lamb, J., Carvalho, L., Gallagher, M. and Knox, J. (2021). The Postdigital Learning Spaces of Higher Education. Postdigital Science and Education, 4(1), 1-12.
Mulcahy, D. (2018). Assembling Spaces of Learning ‘In’ Museums and Schools: A Practice-Based Sociomaterial Perspective, In R. A. Ellis and P. Goodyear (Eds.) (2018) Spaces of Teaching and Learning: Integrating Perspectives on Research and Practice (pp. 13-29). Singapore: Springer.
Nordquist, J. and Laing, A. (2015). Designing spaces for the networked learning landscape. Medical Teacher, 37(4), 337-343.
O’Shea, S., Stone, C., and Delahunty, J. (2015). “I ‘feel’ like I am at university even though I am online.” Exploring how students narrate their engagement with higher education institutions in an online environment. Distance Education, 36(1), 41-58.
Singh, J. B., Sharma, S. K. and Gupta, P. (2021). Physical Learning Environment Challenges in the Digital Divide: How to Design Effective Instruction during COVID-19? Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 48, 133-139.
