Guest Column: An Invitation to ‘Think Like an Instructor’

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Guest Column: An Invitation to ‘Think Like an Instructor’

2/23/2005

By Steve Ehrmann

Terry Calhoun note: I’ve known Steve Ehrmann for many years. The work of he and his colleague at the TLT Group, Steve Gilbert, has been of great utility to the higher education organizations with which they have consulted and whose staff they have trained, and will continue to be important in years to come.

He starts off: “Let’s talk about what students do when they learn. How is that influenced by the designs of their classrooms, libraries, e-mail programs, and course management systems? Big questions, I know, so let me set the stage.” So, on to the stage setting and his call for ideas from you!<

I wasn’t conscious of learning spaces back in 1967 when I started college. I majored in aeronautical and Astronautical engineering at MIT. Soon I realized that engineering education was not what I’d imagined. We undergraduates spent almost no time designing rocket engines, spacecraft, or spacecraft missions. Instead we sat silently in rows in rooms, listening to lectures about science and mathematics. Then we went back to our dorm rooms and read books that said pretty much the same thing as the lectures. In fact, my brighter classmates took twice as many courses as I, skipped most class sessions, did much of the homework, took all the quizzes and exams, and got A’s. I lost my ambition to become an engineer. I got my degree but by that time I’d already begun to take courses in the social sciences, where I ultimately got my doctorate.

In 1975, I first became conscious of how learning spaces could limit learning. By then, I was Director of Educational Research and Assistance at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. Evergreen didn’t (and d'esn’t) teach “courses.” Instead, the dominant mode of instruction is an interdisciplinary “program.” A typical program, “Matter and Motion,” might engage a four-person faculty team and 85 students for a full academic year in the interdisciplinary study of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology. That’s the only thing each member of the team teaches during that time, and the only thing those students study. This schedule gives faculty and students great flexibility – no schedule conflicts and plenty of time – so it’s ideal for working on projects, among other things. In Evergreen’s early years, however, its learning communities were mostly wedged into conventional classrooms, lecture halls, garages, and other spaces that had one thing in common: they weren’t designed for the needs of a 60-80 student learning community working on projects! [Today, some of Evergreen’s facilities to support its learning communities: a big room is surrounded by a variety of smaller rooms that can be used for discussion, project work, and project storage.]

By the 1980s, my interests had turned to educational uses of technology. “Technology” is a word that makes most people think “computers” or “the Web.” But classrooms – and all other kinds of learning spaces – are technologies, too. Technologies don’t “cause” any particular sort of learning to happen.

Imagine forty students in a room. What might an instructor and the students do with that learning space?

A. The instructor might lecture while the students take notes.

B. The instructor might ask the students to arrange their chairs in circles and debate a conceptually difficult, important question; that would be easier if the chairs can be moved.