An important point for understanding how learning takes place is to focus on the environment in which it occurs. The digitization of learning processes and the development of online learning platforms implies a broadened definition of physical learning environments also to include digital environments. Digitalization certainly does not offer physical spaces in the traditional sense but the equipment and technology are highly physical, both to their apparent presence and through its effects in the room.
Actually, they do not replace the physical presence but rather change it. I would like to describe the change as from a one-dimensional presence to a multidimensional one. The students who are in the physical room are also in the digital sphere, either on the learning platform, in different social media or on the internet in general. Moreover, the technical improvements have made the physical presence via the learning platforms increasingly resemble a physical presence without learning platforms. The multidimensional physical presence I describe is equally relevant regardless of the type of participating physics or digital, what we at the university divide into campus and distance courses.
In the literature for the course, there are two interesting positions regarding learning environments. Firstly, Bates underlines that learning environments are broader than just the physical components described as classrooms, lecture theatres, labs and technologies used to create online personal learning environments. Learning environments are broader than just these physical components. He concludes that it is also important to consider learning environments from the learners’ perspectives. (Bates 2015).
Secondly Laurillard conducts an interesting discussion where she makes a point of distinguishing between different types of knowledge/skills, firstly the “specific knowledge in a discipline” and secondly what is called “c”. From four different points[1] Laurillard throughout chapter two implies that fostering high-level generic cognitive skills is more important than the specific professional knowledge base area. Specific knowledge will be peculiar to the discipline, but generic skills are widely applicable across the disciplines. (Laurillard 2012)
My point here is that there is a tendency that teachers focus mainly on the first type of knowledge, specific disciplinary knowledge. But the most important for the learners is the second generic cognitive skill. The learning environment from the learner’s perspective is therefore much broader than the teacher’s perspective. It also covers the societal or cultural context where students are supposed to learn.
But what does societal or cultural contexts contain from the perspective of a student I my discipline, history? I think tentatively about two types of cultural Learning Environments here. The first relates to studying history at the University and the second relates to why History Matters in society.
Laurillard describes History is a “highly contested discipline” What I interpret in this is that the history discipline can be perceived unclearly in learning content as it is in the borderland between humanities and social science. This can affect the status of the subject/program/course a history student is part of which can result in the pursuit of legitimacy and disciplinary identity building. Other perspectives that constitute the cultural learning environment are issues such as – should I becoming a history teacher or not? – what skills do I need to develop to pass university?
The second cultural learning environment “why history matters in society” is currently under a significant change pressure. Serious assessors emphasize that the “public interest in history is not simply rising; it´s skyrocketing.” (Hunt 2018) Giving examples of how the use of history in society is clarified and utilized means that the importance of history in society increases. “Fake news” and obscurities around what is truth whilst ”Memory Wars” is made clear all over the globe which leads to an increasingly charged issue of inclusion and exclusion around imagined Cultural heritage. (Hunt 2018)
Our time needs an education system that even more emphasizes generic cognitive skills on the sense of abilities to manage large amounts of information and distinguish the essentials. Students need to develop their critical thinking and an ability for identification of power structures that consolidate inequality. This is a challenge for our thinking and development of cultural learning environments in higher education
[1] They are: 1) from the point of the educational establishment 2) from the point of view of the workplace 3) from the point of educational theorists’ 4) from the point of a teacher.
Litterature:
Bates, A. W. (2015). Teaching in a Digital Age. Read Appendix 1: Building an effective learning environment. https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/chapter/5-2-what-is-a-learning-environment/)
Hunt, Lynn (2018).
History: why it matters. Cambridge: Polity Press
Laurillard, Diana (2012). Teaching as a design science [Elektronisk resurs]
building pedagogical patterns for learning and technology. 3. ed. New York: Routledge.