re-think, imagine, and ultimately build the kinds of learning environments we ... around its main themes and ideas. ....
Learning in the Future: S p a c e s of P o ss i b i l i t y
Where will we go to learn in the future? Will we GO anywhere? How might we re-design spaces to maximize our cognitive processes and minimize barriers to learning? Who will lead that design? How will information be shared? How will it be “housed”? How will knowledge be acquired? Who will acquire it? When? Where? Which technologies will be part of learning? Which ones won’t?
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n this brief scenario report , we explore these questions and the forces shaping the futures of learning spaces. With this focus on learning spaces, we will intersect and overlap with several systems and industries: including the educational system, digital networks, cognitive studies, government, the maker movement, and public libraries, and more. The heart of this report contains a series of alternative futures for learning and learning spaces. These scenarios are influenced by a series of major shifts that we are in the midst of right now. None of the scenarios are intended to be predictions of a single future that WILL inevitably come, but aspects included in each of them are highly
likely. The combinations and reconfigurations of forces yield unique trajectories. These scenarios are meant to open up new vistas of possibility space in order for readers to re-think, imagine, and ultimately build the kinds of learning environments we might need, and that we prefer, as a society. Use this report to examine your own assumptions about the futures of learning spaces. Use it to provoke you to explore new ways that learning might occur in the future. If it is useful to you, share it with others and have conversations around its main themes and ideas. And finally, use those conversations as inspiration to get directly involved in creating learning spaces of, by, and for future generations.
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Learning Spaces: Five Big Shifts Those who are involved in education and learning are already keenly aware of many of the profound changes taking place for learning and learning spaces. Some are still early stage, and their future more uncertain. Others are well-established trends that will exert a strong influence on the design and practice of learning in the future. This list is not meant to be comprehensive of all the changes coming down the line, but do provide an introduction to some of the major shifts that will impact the rationale and design of learning in the future.
Places: from Enclosure to Disclosure It is overstated that the “brick and mortar” learning environments of the past will totally give way to more ambient, ad hoc learning experiences. Almost certainly, the “market share” of learning in closed rooms will be reduced, but learners of all types will still want and need to gather together frequently in classrooms, labs, libraries and other co-learning spaces. However, these enclosures will be penetrated through by networked technologies connected to the world’s shared knowledge bases. It will be filled with rapid prototyping devices, infused with virtual reality interfaces, and inhabited by algorithmic assistants. And the learners themselves will enter any building or room with their own devices, interfaces, machine assistants, and sharable profiles. Sensors will recognize
Tellart’s Web Lab exhibit features a series of digitally connected, interactive pieces, allowing for hybrid physical / digital learning experiences.
the learners populating the room, coordinate with learner’s devices to understand their learning history, and read bodily cues to customize services to meet their learning needs in real time.
Bodies: From Passive to Active Default educational practices have been designed around a comportment of stillness in the learner. With the body stilled (and often denied), the mind can then be properly receptive. But this theory and practice is being challenged by theories of embodied cognition that show just how important the body is in the learning process. Rather than seeing an active body as an enemy of the mind, it is viewed as a necessary complement, and can, in fact, help the mind access, process, and retain new information and skills. Full-body, brain-aware learning is being operationalized through scheduled exercise regimens, outdoor opportunities to “get your hands dirty,” the strategic use of posture and gesture in the learning process, and more experimental forms such as the “adrenalized learning” of Brightworks School in San Francisco.
Brightworks School in San Francisco integrates exciting project-based approaches with a maker mentality to generate what founder Gever Tulley calls “adrenalized learning.”
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Evaluation: From Grades to Gaming Accomplishment and progress in learning has been communicated via grades, usually through the traditional form of A-F. HOW you measure and what counts (and what doesn’t) significantly influences the actual thing you are measuring and the outcomes you get. Many educational reforms target grading and try to find effective feedback mechanisms. Gaming, especially video games, have almost mastered the art of productive feedback. A player, even if she doesn’t understand the universe of the game, can quickly find out the rules of action, what the goals are, and how to accomplish them. In good game design, a player is always right at the edge of their skill level, and as they progress toward their goal, they are given new tools, new challenges, and new capacities. They “level up” as they go, at their own pace, and with a clear sense of where they’ve come and where they are going. We will see learning experiences come to look more like games in the future, and the spaces learners occupy will be re-designed to allow a more elegant interface with these game-like experiences.
Quest to Learn school in New York has designed its curriculum on the model of games, changing the way learning takes place and how progress is measured.
Teaching: From Hierarchies to Fluid Partnerships Personalized learning, ubiquitous access to information, peer mentoring, flipped-classrooms, and a host of other trends are disrupting the traditional dynamic of an “all-knowing” instructor standing before a classroom full of obedient students. While still the norm in most schools, this relationship will become much more collaborative in the future, with a less hierarchical power dynamic. Leaners will become accustomed to going at their own pace, with content that is curated to be personally relevant and challenging. Do-it-yourself learners will rely more on their actual work as evidence of skill, rather than credentials. And, similar to what is happening in the medical arena, where patients come into a doctor’s office more informed and empowered, learners will enter a classroom or library with the expectation of being served in their learning journey, rather than being “taught” by an authority. These new power dynamics will be resisted by advocates of more traditional methods, but will become increasingly mainstream.
Anna Kamenetz’ recent book, DIY U, chronicles the coming transformations to learning that are being driven by new technologies, changes to the educational system, and new expectations on the how, why, and where learning should take place. 4
Literacies: From Words to Codes Reading, writing, and arithmetic will be part of the foundation of education, but the most important literacies of the future may be geared toward new media and programming languages. As more of the world becomes “smart,” i.e. embedded with computation and networked, we will be called upon to program our world (devices and
built environment). Many of the jobs of the future will involve programming of some variety, or at least the capacity to understand how to systematically manipulate digital/physical objects. In addition, text will be more frequently supplanted by video. Video production and editing, as well as the capacity to effectively communicate orally, will be essential to success.
Scratch and other programming languages geared for kids are becoming part of mainstream academic curricula.
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Al t e r n a t i v e F u t u r e s for L e a r n i n g S p a c e s
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ducation, learning, and learning spaces are undergoing systemic transformations. Previous assumptions and institutional habits are being challenged at fundamental levels. Who is a student? Who is a teacher? How does learning happen? Where does learning happen? Each one of these core questions about education are all in flux, and the answers are more ambiguous, more uncertain, and, depending on your point of view, more interesting than ever. It is a scary time for some, as old models are rapidly being replaced, but is also an exciting time, where new experiments and innovations will have significant long-term effects on individuals and society.
alternative futures, it never returns to its former shape. By employing four distinct archetypes of change— growth, collapse, discipline, and transformation— alternative futures encourages readers to consider a wider range of futures than they might typically entertain.
In the midst of this turbulence, predicting the future of learning spaces is impossible, and linear extrapolations of current trends tend to narrow focus instead of expanding horizons—blinding one to other more radical possibilities (and soon to be probabilities) before us. Therefore, to explore a broad view of learning spaces of the future we are employing the Alternative Futures method developed at the University of Hawaii by Jim Dator. Thinking in alternatives helps to maximize diversity of images of the future, and to borrow a line, once a mind is expanded by
Think of these scenarios as cognitive tools—technologies of time expansion. Use them to reconsider your assumptions about the future of learning spaces. Think about the technologies and social trends driving them, and consider the values embedded within them. Use them to map the space of possibility, then think about what future you’d like to see come about. What would you need to do in order to make your preferred future happen? What is standing in your way? What will you do today to get started building a better future?
Next are four alternative futures for learning spaces, set in North America in the year 2030. None of these scenarios are meant to be best case or worst case. Certain aspects of all four of these futures may eventually come to pass in one form or another, and they may also come to pass in different places at different times.
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Peripatetic Schools In ancient Greece, Aristotle performed lectures while walking, his students following attentively behind. These standup philosophers did not know what modern science has demonstrated: that moving benefits cognition and learning. Aristotle’s “Peripatetic School” has little analog in modern educational approaches, but times are changing. We are slowly waking to the fact that that the mind has a hard time learning what the body cannot feel.
Learning spaces in 2030 include not only the architectonics of books (digital or not), chairs (3D printed or not), and computers (embedded or not), but also the human mind-body as well. Extolling the benefits of walking for learning, most schools in 2030 have installed standing desks, stationary bicycles and treadmills to help students engage in a more
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“full-bodied” learning experience. The barriers between indoor and outdoor education have become increasingly blurred, as schools try and incorporate as much physical activity and nature into classroom experience as they are allowed (and sometimes not allowed!). Inspired by early 21st Century innovations like Gever Tulley’s Brightworks School, many districts around the country are incorporating “adrenalized learning.” For example kindergartners in Kentucky are learning iron soldering, and 3rd graders in Temecula are building working solid fuel rocket launchers.
Many of these new experiments have yet to be adopted in places around the country that are more skeptical of these new approaches, and want to stick with “traditional” education. But the results have been positive so far in districts that have tried these full-bodied learning techniques. Many of these improvements can’t be measured on standardized tests, but if evidence of student satisfaction is any indication, then the peripatetic approach to learning is not just a quaint anachronism from ancient Greece, but a fully 21st century model that will only spread further and further.
Meditation and so-called “blue mind” therapy, where kids float in the ocean, surf, and scuba dive have become very popular and are already showing significant cognitive and emotional benefits. Schools start later in the day to allow teenagers adequate sleep time. These reforms, however, are not trying to reproduce some idyllic non-technological past. They are trying to design scientifically-informed, whole body learning experiences.
Strategic Conversation Prompts
In addition to yoga, meditation, and blue mind, some schools are working with innovative embodied cognition practices and technologies. Students are learning to use gestures and postures to help them learn math. School lunches are being made that take into account the microbiotic profile of ingredients, to help balance attention, mood, and energy levels associated with our “gut brains.” Dogs are being kept in the classroom to provide emotional comfort to students, but also to help improve the microbial environment indoors. And most controversially, some schools have begun to experiment with extra sensory prosthetics to help kids “feel” with other senses to augment what they are learning intellectually.
Use these questions to think about and discuss the implications for you or your organization if this was the future. ▶▶ What values seem to drive this future? How do they compare to your own?
▶▶ How would you redesign your present space to meet the needs of this future?
▶▶ What would be your role in this future, if any? ▶▶ Who are the winners and losers in this future (administrators, learners, companies, technologists, etc.)?
▶▶ Do you find this future plausible? Why or why not? What parts are most plausible? What is least plausible?
▶▶ What do you find most desirable about this future? What do you find least desirable?
▶▶ What can you do today to make what you liked most to occur, and what you liked least to not occur?
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Day One The first learning space is the womb! …or so says the sloganeering from advocates of a radical new educational program that is sweeping the nation. As the U.S. began to slip further and further behind other nations, its “Sputnik” moment came when the NSA revealed that it had been completely compromised by a Chinese artificially intelligent software code that remained invisible for years. Knowing that the Chinese were aggressively pushing intelligence increasing educational technologies, nutritional supplements, cognitive enhancements, and other speculated
interventions, the last vestiges of the anti-science, luddite constituency were pushed to the margins. The U.S. implemented a set of radical reforms and aggressive mandates to try and close the “intelligence gap” with other nations. The “Total Learning” program, often affectionately known as the “womb to wheelchair” program, put in motion a series of learning interventions for people at every age, social class, and cognitive capacity. As early as the first check in with an Obstetrician, parents are given the option
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(with financial incentives such as tax breaks and college savings accounts) to have their fetuses genetically and neurologically tested. After receiving the results of their tests, parents are offered a regimen of vitamins and cognitive enhancements for their children, and they are given access to classes and other support to help them foster positive pregnancies. As developmental biologists and psychologists have found, learning truly begins in the womb, and those exposed to certain programs of sounds, reading, and other factors showed positive results later in life. The Total Learning Program continues for infants as free federal programs allow children as young as 3 months old to participate in accelerated learning environments. Parents love the 2 hours of free daycare they get everyday, and the kids are given the best possible early education— backed by the latest development science and learning technology. And while this is a national program available to all citizens, it is not a bureaucratic, “cookie cutter” experience. Those prenatal tests are bolstered by a battery of continuing testing that tracks emotional development, learning capacity and aptitudes, brain function, hormonal response, and microbial makeup. Each learner is given a personal, virtual learning avatar that accompanies a person as he/she navigates her world. The avatar teacher will “popup” in the environment to ask questions, point out learning opportunities, and guiding one through a customized program of optimized learning. The avatar has been programmed to be most pleasing and effective to each individual, based on the learners’ aesthetic preferences, as read by fMRI responses first pioneered by neuromarketers. The avatar will grow, evolve, and sometimes change to a different “skin” or character, based on a learner’s real-time needs. As of 2030, 31 states have signed on to have their tap water fortified with cognitive enhancers. While most of these states’ students were already ahead of those in the laggard states, they are already seeing the widening of the achievement gap. But, even without the enhancements in the water, students in the laggard states have seen marked improvement in test scores and educational outcomes because of the Total Learning Program. Overall, in just 6 years since the Total Learning Program was launched, the U.S. has moved up 13 spaces in global education rankings.
And as the “womb to wheelchair” nickname attests, this learning revolution was not only targeted for school-age children. Besides the cognitive enhancers in the water, advanced reskilling programs, free adult education, virtual teachers, brain training, and other tools and techniques are available to almost every adult in the country. With almost every aspect of the environment turned into an educational opportunity, the concept of a learning space has changed radically. There are still a host of dedicated learning spaces available for short bursts of concentrated learning. Many kids (and adults) will go to these intensive learning retreats to focus on specific topics or skills, and these hyperlearning environments are outfitted with the latest technologies for effective “neuron tuning.” Repetitive magnetic stimulators and direct current machines help learners acquire skills faster. Nutrition and exercise are optimized for learning. Complementary peer groups are algorithmically organized to help balance skills and styles for maximum result. The scientification (and some would say militarization) of learning has led many to protest this “totalitarian” approach to education, and to question whether competing with the Chinese in a cyberwar arms race is the right motivation for these programs. But most people, even if they are skeptical of the reasons, are happy that the country has decided to invest in learning with such full commitment and clear vision.
Strategic Conversation Prompts Use these questions to think about and discuss the implications for you or your organization if this was the future. ▶▶ What values seem to drive this future? How do they compare to your own?
▶▶ How would you redesign your present space to meet the needs of this future?
▶▶ What would be your role in this future, if any? ▶▶ Who are the winners and losers in this future (administrators, learners, companies, technologists, etc.)?
▶▶ Do you find this future plausible? Why or why not? What parts are most plausible? What is least plausible?
▶▶ What do you find most desirable about this future? What do you find least desirable?
▶▶ What can you do today to make what you liked most to occur, and what you liked least to not occur?
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Schoolzania!! What is school but a place to prepare kids to succeed as adults? So why are schools designed to be like anything but the adult world (unless you count prisons)? It was high time to completely ret hink the learning experience, and to redesign education to meet the goal of getting kids ready to be successful workers. Public institutions have been on a multiple generation decline in effectiveness and trust, so instead of turning to government to change
education, people pinned their hopes on the private sector. Entrepreneurship worked to keep America the leading economy in the world, so why wouldn’t it work for education as well? The factory model for business had longed past, so the factory model of education had to be discarded as well. Capitalizing on the fact that kids love to role-play what
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their parents and other adults do, a host of new kinds of “private schools” began to emerge. Calling back to successful previous examples like “Space Camp”, which trained kids as “real” astronauts, these schools were designed and run like little businesses or corporations. Kids would work in made-up companies and try to solve real-world problems with new business innovations, new products, and even mergers and acquisitions of other schools. These projectbased, “real-world” learning environments provided holistic, solutions-driven students.
Of course there were those who didn’t want their kids learning the insandouts of derivative trading at Goldman Sachs Charter School™, but those kids were going to be left behind in the competitive landscape ahead. And who can complain? Its a winw inw in. Kids get the excitement and fulfillment of real-life, applied education. School districts get the extra money they desperately needed to continue to provide public education. And corporations got millions of little protoworkers who would be much more prepared to slide right in to good jobs later in life.
And, by and large, kids loved it. They loved it so much so, and districts saw such immediate enthusiasm, that actual companies began to sponsor schools, and have kids tackle real-life business issues and challenges. McDonald’s already had Hamburger University™, so why not Hamburger High, or Hamburger Elementary? In the first year of McDonald’s paid sponsorship, a junior high student figured out a system of slaughtering cattle that was not only more sanitary, but that also increased speed of processing by 1.5%a huge number if you consider the scale that McDonald’s operates.
Strategic Conversation Prompts Use these questions to think about and discuss the implications for you or your organization if this was the future. ▶▶ What values seem to drive this future? How do they compare to your own?
▶▶ How would you redesign your present space to meet the needs of this future?
▶▶ What would be your role in this future, if any? ▶▶ Who are the winners and losers in this future (administrators, learners, companies, technologists, etc.)?
▶▶ Do you find this future plausible? Why or why not? What parts Apple High™ in Cupertino, CA, Google Elementary® in Chattanooga, TN, GM Magnet® School in Detroit, MI, and hundreds of other corporate sponsored schools popped up all over the country. And most went for high fidelity experiences, building schools that look like corporate headquarters, or graphic design departments, or engineering labs. Kids got to learn first hand what they will likely put to use in their careers as adults.
are most plausible? What is least plausible?
▶▶ What do you find most desirable about this future? What do you find least desirable?
▶▶ What can you do today to make what you liked most to occur, and what you liked least to not occur?
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Incredible Journey Learning is about changing your brain. Changing your brain changes your perspective on the world. Every true learning event leaves a slightly different person that the one before. We used to have to go to places to learn—schools, museums, labs, or libraries. That required tedious and expensive movement of things like books, chairs, and equipment. But today, in 2030, learners are like walking magnets, pulling information, knowledge, experience
toward them at every step. Learners can virtually scale down to the microscopic level to explore photosynthesis of the plants they are looking at, or scale up to cosmic level to see how a solar eruption was absorbed by the atmosphere above them—all while walking down the same street. This evolution of learning spaces was driven first by the Internet of Information (1993), the Internet of Things (2014, and the Internet of Intelligence (2021).
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Embedded and wearable computing made all these networked things and intelligent agents come together and work together like never before. With head’s up displays and constantly tethered to peer learning communities, a learner of any age was always able to pull up relevant information, be challenged to learn something new in place, or to collaborate with others either physically proximate or virtually connected. Learning became contextually relevant by default, and special algorithms and machine learning allowed for virtual agents in learner’s head’s up displays to customize educational programs to fit the ability and interests of the user.
Strategic Conversation Prompts Use these questions to think about and discuss the implications for you or your organization if this was the future. ▶▶ What values seem to drive this future? How do they compare to your own?
▶▶ How would you redesign your present space to meet the needs of this future?
▶▶ What would be your role in this future, if any? ▶▶ Who are the winners and losers in this future (administrators, learners, companies, technologists, etc.)?
▶▶ Do you find this future plausible? Why or why not? What parts are most plausible? What is least plausible?
In addition to the more automated processes, traditional teachers were also assigned to “classes” of students and would watch their visual feeds from a control room, suggesting lessons, pulling out insights, and asking questions of their students in real-time. Learning often felt like a real-life scavenger hunt. It was exciting, unpredictable, and goal directed.
▶▶ What do you find most desirable about this future? What do you find least desirable?
▶▶ What can you do today to make what you liked most to occur, and what you liked least to not occur?
And even though many people complained that these tools and teaching techniques were isolating students, those who studied the outcomes demonstrated that students were actually becoming more socially adept, emotionally aware, and “present” in their environments. With 35 other student peers, and at least one teacher, always virtually connected during school hours, a collective intimacy and camaraderie was formed. In many cases this bond was stronger than those students in traditional schools. And because learning changes the brain and the person, each student is given virtual access to learning counselors 24/7, who help kids process their newly emerging relationship to the world and to themselves.
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Now What? |
A Call for Action
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o one knows what the learning spaces will precisely look like in the future, but they will look and feel very different from today. Learning spaces will be designed around the forces described in the scenarios above. It is up to people today to carefully consider the major drivers of change that are poised to transform learning, as well as the new technologies and capacities that are emerging. We must consider these drivers in light of our own goals and core social values, and to begin to consciously design ecosystems of learning that benefit individual learners of today and the society of tomorrow. There are great challenges ahead for us as a civilization trying to navigate the 21st century, but there are great possibilities to create bold new ways of living that have never been seen before. The hope of the future lies in our capacity and our potential, to learn.
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Additional Reading and Resources Designing Spaces for Effective Learning http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/learningspaces.pdf Clark, A. Natural Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence. (2004) Oxford University Press. Malafouris, L. “The Brain–Artefact Interface (BAI): A Challenge for Archaeology and Cultural Neuroscience.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. (2009) University of Chicago. “Gestures Lend A Hand In Learning Mathematics; Hand Movements Help Create New Ideas.” ScienceDaily. (March 6, 2009). Available at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090224133204.htm MacLean, K., et al. “Intensive Meditation Training Improves Perceptual Discrimination and Sustained Attention.” Psychological Science (May 2010). Available at: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/2010/maclean.cfm Huppert, F., and Johnson, D. “A controlled trial of mindfulness training in schools: The importance of practice for an impact on wellbeing.” The Journal of Positive Psychology. Volume 5, Issue 4. (July 2010) Available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17439761003794148 Changizi, Mark. “Where Are the Pain Engineers?” First appeared on May 6, 2010, as a feature at bodyinmind.au (August 11, 2010). Available at: https://changizi.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/where-are-the-pain-engineers/ School’s Over: Learning Spaces in Europe 2020. http://ftp.jrc.es/EURdoc/JRC47412.pdf Design for Learning: http://www.designforlearning.com.au/ Lab for Embodied Cognition (ASU): https://psychology.clas.asu.edu/glenberg Embodied Cognition Lab (UCSD): http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~nunez/Nunez_ECL/Welcome.html Embodied Social Cognition Lab (U Toronto): http://www.embodiedsocialcognition.com/ Virtual Human Interactions Lab, VHIL, (Stanford): http://vhil.stanford.edu/ Mulkern, Anne C. (2013) “If you know how a cow feels, will you eat less meat?” Scientific American http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/if-you-know-how-cow-feels-will-you-eat-less-meat/
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