I must admit: as a teacher, I did not think much about the physical environment. You usually book a room that has enough places to accommodate the number of students, that has enough whiteboard space and has a projector, in case you need one. That tells a lot about how I used to look at teaching: as a form of transmitting information. During the last years I learned that it is important to think about how we can facilitate learning, using different activities that best fit in the process. With different activities comes the need to use a variety of spaces that best suites those activities. For example round tables if you want to promote group discussions (we have experienced that lately, as we could hardly stop talking to each other when we had to pay central attention \ud83d\ude42 ). There is, thus, the influence of the physical space on the group dynamics and on the interactions between students among themselves or between students and teacher. There is also another aspect, that relates on the individual or group mindset that can be influenced by the choice of the learning space. Just think about what would trigger your creativity more: the same spot in the same boring room or an unusual layout of the room once in a while? Do you prefer a silent or a somewhat noisy room? Do you prefer a cosy room or large open spaces? There is probably a whole science that tries answering these questions in different contexts and I am not trying to cover that here. I just want to make the point that it is important, as a teacher, to realise that not only the activities, but also the space that we choose can influence the learning process.<\/p>\n
Not only the physical space, but also the virtual learning environment is something that requires extra care. I am not using a lot of digital environments in my activities, so my experience is very limited. I learned a lot from the more experienced colleagues and I reflected on possibilities to use more digital tools to improve the learning process. I find interesting that the virtual space imposes particular unwritten rules of interaction that are less evident while meeting in physical spaces. To give just one example, if you are in a physical room and talk to a group, you can point to a person or use eye-contact to make sure that the other person is listening, while in a video lecture room you need to use more verbal tools. I learned that it is important to set clear a few important rules in the beginning of a video lecture, to make the interaction smoother.<\/p>\n
I think I learned many useful things in this meeting and I am looking forward to use the acquired knowledge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I must admit: as a teacher, I did not think much about the physical environment. You usually book a room that has enough places to accommodate the number of students, that has enough whiteboard space and has a projector, in case you need one. That tells a lot about how I used to look at […]<\/p>\n