{"id":3507,"date":"2021-07-05T15:31:16","date_gmt":"2021-07-05T15:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/CESI\/?p=3507"},"modified":"2022-04-13T15:46:22","modified_gmt":"2022-04-13T15:46:22","slug":"learning-and-teaching-conference-2021-the-material-grounds-of-digital-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/learning-and-teaching-conference-2021-the-material-grounds-of-digital-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning and Teaching Conference 2021- The Material Grounds of Digital Learning"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n\r\n\r\n

In this past 1.5 year and in all levels of education, we got used to talking about digital and analogue means, online and on campus learning environments, the physical and the virtual. And by doing so, we often embraced these dualities and occasionally forgot that there is always a physical environment that supports the digital one, there is always a hardware that supports the software, a non-digital infrastructure that grounds digital learning. In Material Grounds of Digital Learning<\/em> presentation, I talk about the importance of taking these material grounds into consideration, of re-imagining them and reintroducing them in the design of digital learning.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Year 1 of Architectural education is often designed as a foundation year to design studies. Students are introduced to design learning, which presupposes learning by doing and by watching others do, by exploring and by experimenting, in addition to more \u2018traditional\u2019 modes of learning, like library-research or by following teacher\u2019s advice. \u00a0All these activities are hosted in various physical environments, but there is one of seminal importance for students of architects, the design studio.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In a typical year in architectural studies, students and tutors dwell<\/em> in design studios.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

They come in the morning, meet and greet their peers, lay their tools, organise material resources and design outputs, run late to a lecture or seminar, return to meet friends, share a snack, exchange notes, email their teachers. In the same space students read relevant or not books and magazines, use their laptops, assemble their design work, listen to music, borrow a tool, produce models and drawings, brainstorm, demonstrate or put to test somebody else\u2019s idea, etc.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In design studios, creativity develops as an assemblage of very diverse learning and social instances, of continuous efforts and meaningful interruptions, of social and learning encounters, not all of which are scheduled or have learning value.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

As such, the design studio is an expandable, adaptable, smooth space, a key learning environment for creative practices, and a threshold to other learning environments\/practices, in and out of campus.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

These messy spontaneous creative rituals struggled to fit in our Covid-safe prebooked studio-desks and timeslots, where students would track and trace their visit to campus, sanitise their working area and equipment, keep 2 metres distance at all times, work in a focused and productive manner for 2-3hours, and then go back home or to take a 15 minutes break in order to return to a recently ventilated and deep cleaned working space. While our studios were safely and effectively re-arranged, Health and Safety routines seemed to be in battle with our creative ones.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In particular, and in the frame of design education, this past year:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n