Infrastructure – ignored and invisible – is usually taken for granted, until it goes wrong. We notice when the Wi-Fi signal drops out or when there’s a power cut. The lockdowns, physical distancing, and school and university closures associated with Covid-19 have disrupted educational practices. Teachers and students have had to rethink their ways of working, with activity redistributed across time, space and media. Some commentators have called this an ‘online pivot’. People with deeper expertise in online education prefer to label it ‘emergency remote teaching’ (Hodges, Moore, Lockee, Trust, & Bond, 2020). Whatever the shorthand, one needs to acknowledge that nobody actually learns online. Online learning happens wherever the learner is. The material circumstances in which students, of all ages, are trying to learn can have profound effects on their ability to work, concentrate, hear and speak, ask for help or get encouragement. Studying from home during lockdown can multiply the effects of digital, economic and social disadvantage.

‘The material circumstances in which students, of all ages, are trying to learn can have profound effects on their ability to work, concentrate, hear and speak, ask for help or get encouragement. Studying from home during lockdown can multiply the effects of digital, economic and social disadvantage.’

The ‘online pivot’ was not caused by infrastructure breaking down. Rather, it reminds us that infrastructure is relational. People and activities had to shift, and educational practices were rapidly reshaped to make the best of a bad job, using the tools and resources available. We do not know whether long-term damage is being done to students’ learning. The already disadvantaged are likely to suffer most. Some of the stresses on teachers, students and carers have been severe. But the speed and skill with which the diverse arrangements for ‘emergency remote teaching’ were assembled, and the fact that there has been significant continuity of educational provision, are notable achievements. Few would have predicted this level of resilience, especially given the influential myths about teachers’ resistance to change and technophobia.

In many countries, plans are now being developed to return to school and to open up university campuses. The speed of implementation will depend on concerns about a ‘second wave’ of infections. To mitigate risks, plans include reducing numbers of students in classrooms and lecture halls, spacing their desks and fitting plexiglass shields. In my own university, the Return to Campus Roadmap is prioritising ‘hands-on, skills-based learning’, opening up science labs, studio spaces and the specialist sites needed by students in engineering, medicine, allied health and veterinary science.

The research reported in my latest British Journal of Educational Technology paper was done in ‘normal times’ (Goodyear, 2020). It aims to characterise some of the ways in which teachers think about learning spaces and the activities unfolding within them. It may also shed some light on how teachers and students reconfigure educational practices, whether in the move to locked-down learning or in the process of opening up again.

It is often said that pedagogy should drive designs for new learning spaces; that design decisions, just like technology choices, should be informed by a sharp sense of educational purpose. What soon becomes clear, from closely observing and interviewing those involved, is that this simple maxim hides more than it enables. ‘Zooming out’ from close observations of practice, I make two broad conjectures.

First, teachers were/are able to design very complex learning spaces, such as hybrid (digital-material) educational laboratories, with hundreds of components and precisely arranged spatial configurations. But they do so by imagining situated activities (for students) that are translations from professional scientific practice and practice spaces. In other words, they use an apprenticeship model and are able to infer requirements for an educational space by mentally simulating novice and professional activities.

Second, student activity in complex learning spaces rarely has a single, simple object. Real educational purposes are manifold. Each student’s activity aligns with a mix of several objects, such that the activity:

1. is enjoyable and satisfying
2. demonstrates competent performance in the here-and-now
3. best prepares them for reproducing the performance on future occasions (such as in a workplace)
4. improves skills and understanding
5. maximises academic marks obtained
6. expeditiously meets the task requirements, making it possible to balance competing demands on their time.

Teachers know that students will adapt what is designed for them. Theorising the ways in which innovative teachers design for new configurations of activity and infrastructure, through close study of their actual practices, helps explain some of the dynamics of educational resilience.

This blog is based on the article ‘Design and co-configuration for hybrid learning: Theorising the practices of learning space design’ by Peter Goodyear, published in the British Journal of Educational Technology. It is free-to-view for non-subscribers for a limited period courtesy of our publisher, Wiley.

References

Goodyear, P. (2020). Design and co-configuration for hybrid learning: Theorising the practices of learning space design. British Journal of Educational Technology, 51(4), 1045–1060. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12925

Hodges, C., Moore, S., Lockee, B., Trust, T., & Bond, A. (2020). The difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning. EDUCAUSE Review. Retrieved from https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/3/the-difference-between-emergency-remote-teaching-and-online-learning