Fascinating and relevant talk from TED.com:

“People often credit their ideas to individual “Eureka!” moments. But Steven Johnson shows how history tells a different story. His fascinating tour takes us from the “liquid networks” of London’s coffee houses to Charles Darwin’s long, slow hunch to today’s high-velocity web.”

Steven Johnson: Where Good Ideas Come From

“To support students through their learning requires a ‘holding environment for the toleration of confusion’ … such a space needs to be ‘safe’, but not merely a ‘comfort zone’. It is where students can feel able to take risks and deal with uncertainty, as an essential pre-condition of learning. They need to know that their fellow students are also experiencing difficulties.”

Jos Boys (2011), Towards Creative Learning Spaces, p43

Ian Snowley, the University Librarian, has joined the Learning Spaces Group.

The group now combines undergraduate and postgraduate student representatives with academics from the three Colleges and support staff from Estates, ICT, the Library and Registry. This combination of backgrounds and disciplines makes the LSG uniquely suited to guide the design, management and evaluation of the University’s learning landscape.

The LSG’s current project is the creation, support and evaluation of three new learning environments in the Main Admin Building this summer to support Student as Producer. The LSG is also developing a number of new project proposals for consideration at SMT on 1 October.

“Institutional buildings act as if they were designed specifically to prevent change for the organisation inside and to convey timeless reliability to everyone outside. When forced to change anyway, as they always are, they do so with expensive reluctance and all possible delay. Institutional buildings are mortified by change.”

Stewart Brand (1994) How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built.

Following the University’s publication of the Learning Landscapes in Higher Education report in 2010 and the opening of the Business & Law building in 2011, our next experiment is to create three new learning environments in the Main Admin Building this summer. The rooms’ designs are a direct response to Student as Producer.

We have published a detailed business case and design proposal and would welcome your comments, your questions, and your ideas for further projects.