What can space really do in the ways of learning. • I think space empowers people to learn. • It facilitates maximum capacity and allows teacher and student to do more. • It creates ownership with those in the space and allows them to reach full capacity. • It sets a tone for what is to be done • Space organizes • Space demonstrates level of interest in its occupants. • Space signals safety • Space brings people in, give a place for community to happen.
Vic - I like the reference to ownership of space, this can have a big impact on how comfortable people feel in a space and how ready they are to learn. Ownership is a strong method of engagement and level setting amongst a group of learners. What is also interesting in your bullets is that as much as space affords these aspects, it can also take them all away (think prison or cubicles).
I visited the reading room in the Bing Wing of the Green Library. This room is mainly a study room, the books on the periphery are books full of lists and facts, and in my time there no one even glanced at them. It seems like this is the function intended for the room. There are a lot of tables with laptop friendly hook ups and leather chairs I can only assume are for reading. No one is talking or collaborating, and if they do lean over to say something to the person next to them it is quick and whispered. Outside the room there are a few small rooms for group study with a white board and a table, but it is clear once you come in, silent study is the only thing permissible. Last quarter I heard from one of my professors that they pump white noise into the room. I didnt remember when I first got there, but once I realized what was happening, it drove me crazy and I had to leave.
I think the role libraries play is lessening by the day. I wrote my first masters thesis without using a library and the only library i have really used on campus is the Law Library to study....they have the awesome chairs. I think libraries should become less a storehouse of information and more a place of study and collaboration. Books are becoming too antiquated to devote the amount of time and space given to them now. If they want to adapt to the changing world, libraries could become places that provide creative ways to get information or places with liscences to all the subscription information sites.
I must preface with a confession: I did not read the reflection prompt before I went to the Cantor on Friday. The poster project sat in my conscious and I assumed the task would be to critique the learning environment at the Cantor rather than note the exemplary. I love the Cantor, and I would return for closer observation of exemplary practices, but I am in Austin Texas through the due date.
One place in the museum that capitalizes on educational opportunities is the section dedicated to the history of the Stanford family and Stanford University’s beginnings. The placards on the wall give a relatively large amount of information about the family’s history and dedication to philanthropy coupled with analysis of the actual paintings. This amount of information is rare in a museum when explanations are usually brief and patrons come are left to largely their own analysis. I believe this relative surfeit of information derives from the unique nature of the room’s purpose. This section is not displaying art as much as it is using art to tell the Stanford’s family story. The rooms are covered in antique wall paper, have several pieces of furniture and light fixtures resembling those used at the end of the nineteenth century to set a stark contrast between this section and the rest of the white walled, brightly lit sections of the museum. Through decoration the rooms dedicated to the Stanfords have a different purpose and tone that allow a large amount of information to be presented.
I do not think this setting is replicable for the rest of the museum, but there is a lot of room for improvement in Cantor even though it is on par with most other museums in the amount of educational opportunities captured. For example, the Rodin collection at Stanford is the finest in the United States, but the information presented about him and his work is negligible. In the outside sculpture garden three paragraphs are written about Rodin’s work. The reader learns that Rodin was influenced by those who came before him and he himself influenced those that followed him. In How People Learn, Brown states that learning is expedited when they can see how something is similar and different to other ideas. I think it would be optimal if the Cantor could show how Rodin was influenced by the sculptors before him and how his work permeates his contemporaries. They could show pictures of sculpture before Rodin and how is similar and different to previous works then show how his influence surfaces in future works.
This lack of capitalization of opportunity is not unique to the Cantor but is an epidemic in museums everywhere. If museums could show the work in perspective of what it was influenced by and how it changed what came after it, I believe people would understand art much better. If they are given access to the progression of art and where a particular piece fits in, art will become much less intimidating to the average viewer. There are a variety of ways to do this, which I will not go into here, but the opportunity exists to put paintings in reference to the artistic cannon they belong could change the way museums educate the public and how people view art.
Annie Adams I think that you made a great point that gaining an understanding of the progression of art and where a particular piece fits in helps people to gain a better appreciation for what they are seeing and makes the whole experience less intimidating. One experience that this comment reminded me of was when I visited the recent Monet exhibit at San Fransisco's Legion of Honor. You had to make an appointment to see the exhibit and you only had one-half-hour to go through the show. The time-frame gave you a good perspective of the commitment you would be making to see the exhibit. The exhibit was arranged such that the paintings were grouped by the decades of Monet's life that he created them. This allowed the viewer to see the progression of Monet's technique through different stages and how diferent locations and experiences shaped his work. Furthermore, they found three-five paintings that Monet completed on the same place, which allowed you to see how the artist developed the one famous image we saw. All in all, this Monet experience is one example of how I appreciate the opportunity that a museum can provide to understanding the progression of art to appreciate the art.
Dan Gilbert Thanks Matt, I like your challenge to Cantor and museums everywhere to include more context. I think there is a complementary challenge to museum visitors too and that is that we take a more active approach to learning while visiting. One thing I am going to do is just to bring a small notebook and pencil/pen with me and write down the things I learned, wish I learned or other general reflections. The museum has a role to play to improve the expereince and so do to the visitors. In the best cases of school class visits, I think teachers can play this role and scafold some learning outcomes pretty well.
Addendum: I realize I was a little "off task" in my writing so I will briefly share what amounts to my best museum experiences. My girlfriend has a masters in art history and is certified by Sotheby's for a couple of things that I still dont understand. What is important here is that she has forgotten more about art than I will ever know and she is the best person to go to museums with. She gives all the information I want about different paintings and how they fit into the progression of art. I appreciate modern art so much more now that I go to museums with her and hear what the painter was trying to do with a piece or why it is important. Another great reason it is great to go to museums with her is because she gets in free. This not only saves money but it gives us the freedom to come and go as we please and not feel the need to see everything in the museum. By taking the MOMA a floor at a time, I can absorb much more without the pressure of packing the whole museum into a couple of hours. To get technical, it helps me avoid the "cognitive overload" Allen describes (S20)
I think chapter two of Rogoff’s How People Learn is one of the more fascinating pieces of writing I have read in awhile. It was very interesting the way Rogoff classified experts as people who have more efficient information retrieval and understand complicated patterns rather than someone who has an intricate collection of facts. To me, the three best examples he uses to demonstrate the difference between experts and novices are chess players, physics experts, and history professor. As a very poor chess player and former teacher I find it interesting that experts and novices may use the same amount of reasoning in their action, but the expert’s reasoning is much more complex. So complex that they may not even consider their opponent to make novice-like moves and only predict and plan for high level chess strategy. This tells me that experts and novices operate on a completely different plane and even while playing the same game, may have no parallel thoughts. The example of the physics experts sheds light on how experts classify information differently than novices. The fact that physics experts grouped the problem based on an underlying, opaque theme rather than something as pedestrian as “incline” is very telling of what an expert is and how they work. Rogoff’s description of how history professors work to solve a problem shows the skill set experts have to engage problems. An expert can begin a problem in several different ways and use a variety of methods until the problem is solved rather than a novice stopping after their brief repertoire of methods or facts is exhausted.
I think the Brown piece is a nice compliment to the Rogoff piece because of the discussion on the effects of cultural in development. In American Philosophy last quarter we talked quite a bit on the cultural implications in education and I came to the conclusion, guided by Ray McDermott, that you cannot decouple culture’s impact on development or dilute the impact one has on the culture around them. Too often learning is thought of without taking into account cultural setting but I believe understanding surrounding culture is essential to excellent education. This piece is a nice synopsis of the progression of thought among philosophers and psychologists and ends with an accurate portrayal of how the two interact. I think two different Brown quotes are very indicative of what this piece reinforced for me and what he is trying to convey.
“Thus, individual and cultural processes are mutually constituting rather than defined separately from each other” (p. 51)
“As people develop through their shared use of cultural tools and practices they simultaneously contribute to the transformation of cultural tools, practices and institutions.” (p. 52)
The questions that remain stem from trying to tie the three main articles together. Are certain cultures more conducive to producing expert thinkers and what traits of that culture are most conducive? What types of culture do experts create and thrive in? What type of culture is not conducive to experts? How does space design play into creating culture and experts? (I would guess that is a 10 week question)
Deb Kim "Thank you Matt for your thoughtful reflections. Just to clarify - the How People Learn chapter 2 on experts and novices is part of a National Academies publication edited by John Bransford among others. The cultral piece that reminded you of Ray McDermotts course is the Rogoff piece. I enjoyed hearing bits of you and your own experiences in the readings. I look forward to reading more. I see that you got the big message that learning is tangled up in context and constantly transforming each other."
To me learning is the accumulation of ideas. I think differences in learning comes with who learns the ideas as facts and who learns the ideas of concepts. Right now I think that students who learn these ideas as concepts have the advantage and will be the "experts." I realize i am a traditionalist. I think learning mainly happens in the school and when I think about learning or designing learning spaces my mental image is always a school. Weirdly it is not a school i attended, taught or visited; but rather a school that I created in my head as ideal in design and in methods.