Place-Based Spaces for Networked Learning

With the boundaries of place softened and extended by digital communications technologies, learning in a networked society necessitates new distributions of activity across time, space, media, and people; and this development is no longer exclusive to formally designated spaces such as school classrooms, lecture halls, or research laboratories. Place-based Spaces for Networked Learning explores how qualities of physical places make both formal and informal education in a networked society possible. Through a series of investigations and case studies, it illuminates the structural composition and functioning of complex learning environments.

This book offers a wealth of key design elements and attributes for productive learning that educational designers can reuse in multiple contexts. The chapters examine how places are modified, expanded, or supplemented by networking technologies and practices in order to create spaces in which learners can collaboratively develop new understandings, connections, and capabilities. Utilizing a range of diverse but complementary perspectives from anthropology, archaeology, architecture, geography, psychology, sociology, and urban studies, Place-based Spaces for Networked Learning addresses how material places and digital spaces are understood; how sense can be made of new assemblages and configurations of tasks, tools, and people; how the real-time analysis of new flows of data can inform and entertain users of a space; and how access to the digital realm changes our experiences with both places and other people.

Lucila Carvalho is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Research on Learning and Innovation at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her Ph.D. combined research in design, learning technology and the sociology of knowledge. She has studied and carried out research in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Brazil. She has published and presented her work at various international conferences in the fields of education, sociology, systemic functional linguistics, design and software engineering.

Peter Goodyear is Professor of Education and Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Learning and Innovation at the University of Sydney, Australia. He has been carrying out research in the field of learning and technology since the early 1980s, working in the UK, Europe and Australia. He has published eight books and over 100 journal articles and book chapters.

Maarten de Laat is Professor of Professional Development in Social Networks at the Welten Institute of the Open University of the Netherlands. His research concentrates on exploring social learning strategies and networked relationships that facilitate learning and professional development. He has published and presented his research extensively in international research journals, books and conferences. He is co-chair of the biannual International Networked Learning Conference.