Future Learning Space Design Principles to Support an Inquiry Learning Culture

• In Event: Structured Poster Session: Understanding Future Learning Spaces Across Multiple Architectures

Abstract

Objective
We view learning communities (LCs) as a pedagogical approach that is especially appropriate to serve as a framework for rethinking the way FLSs are conceptualized and designed. This research examines the impact of implementing FLS design-principles on an important aspect of LCs – students’ inquiry learning culture.

Theoretical Perspectives
The overall goal of LCs is to foster a learning culture where both individuals and the community as a whole learn how to learn (Bielaczyc, Kapur, & Collins, 2013). Cultivating an inquiry learning culture in LCs involves various types of supports designed to encourage: (a) multiple-perspective exploration of problems; (b) collective gathering and interpretation of evidence and data; (c) norms in which mistakes are seen as opportunities for learning; (d) processes and infrastructures that enable the development of a dynamic collective knowledge-base (Dillenbourg, 1999; Littleton et al., 2005).

Methods
Sagy et al. (2016) identify various dimensions stemming from educational, psychological and sociological literature, along which students’ culture of learning can be characterized on a continuum between internal and external values. These dimensions include conception of learning, knowledge judgment, attitude toward authority and attitude toward uncertainty. Supporting all these in traditional learning spaces is challenging. To address this, we identify three main FLS design-principles that can support an inquiry learning culture: Multiple perspective design, multiple social activity structures, and visualization of shared conceptual spaces. Our realization of these principles is based on the knowledge community and inquiry (KCI) framework (Slotta, Tissenbaum & Lui, 2013). Table 3 shows how the FLS design-principles are implemented in KCI design-principles.  
Using a design-based research approach with three iterations, we gradually introduced FLS design features to an existing Web-based Inquiry Environment (WISE) module on asthma as a socio-scientific issue (Tate, Clark, Gallagher, & McLaughlin, 2008). The first iteration was an implementation of the original module (with a few cultural adaptations). In the second iteration we added pedagogical and technological design features to embed the KCI approach, and in the third iteration we adjusted the physical space to fully support FLS design-principles.

Results
Preliminary findings show that the implementation of the FLS design-principles (as reflected in the KCI approach) has the potential to foster internal values in students’ inquiry learning culture. For example, students who learned in the second iteration of the asthma module noted that the teamwork in the FLS taught them “how to talk to each other, how to deal with opinions of others, how to say what you think and then also stand behind it, and also, how to teach each other and do all the work without the teacher’s explanations...”. Furthermore, we found that adjusting the physical space to fully support the FLS design-principles in the third iteration enhanced this potential. For example, students noted that “all the team’s members worked at any given moment, which barely happens in the regular classroom…”.

Significance
The three FLS design-principles, articulated and empirically tested within this study, highlight the value of conceptualizing FLS pedagogically and technologically, as well as physically designing the space to support this conceptualization.

Authors

• Carmit Pion, University of Haifa

• Yael Kali, University of Haifa