Edgeless learning space

Physical and online learning spaces are becoming significantly more un-bounded as technology, pedagogy and society changes. Indeed the very existence of learning spaces bounded by walls (physical or virtual) and determined by well-understood conventions may seem to be under threat. Futurologists are foretelling an “edgeless” university (Bradwell, 2009). In many ways, students are already there. Consider how, from the perspective of the traditional teacher, a lecture is firmly contained within a physical room, a time and place, and a hierarchical organisational structure of courses, assessment criteria, subject discipline and institutional membership. For a student, connected beyond those bounds via social networks and time-shifted through cheap and instantaneous methods for recording and peer-to-peer sharing, the same event is just another element in an essentially distributed and nomadic experience. The openness of an unbounded edgeless learning space also implies a more prominent role for aleatory influences.

Bradwell, P. (2009), The Edgeless University: Why Higher Education Must Embrace Technology, DEMOS.

Robert O'Toole : 25 Jun 2009 23:15 |  Tags: Concepts Ideation |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem