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Room for learning


Ambition: We will become a living lab for proactive place- and space-aware learning.  

The goal is to develop recommendations for better learning space design for optimizing learning. We will consolidate research and practice as relevant for formal and informal contexts, to meet formal and informal learning goals, from the perspective of learners, instructors, learning space designers and policy-makers.

To achieve our ambition, we will:

  • Create an overview of what is known about rational and relational approaches to learning spaces
  • Do comparative studies of learning in diverse learning spaces and examine their relevance for learning. We will compare learning in multiple types of learning environments, as diverse as classrooms, museums, outdoor learning programs, snowy mountains, and the open road. We will search for place- and space-general and place-and space-specific characteristics that can be used to inform better learning space design.
  • Explore the impact of universal design (or lack of it) on learning processes for both mainstream and target populations..
  • Consolidate what we learn in recommendations for learning space design and use.

Sample presentations and publications

Hallaren, T. i. (2021).  Rom for læring: En spørreundersøkelse om fysiske omgivelser, undervisningsform og studenters læring i høyere utdanning. (Published in Munin.no, https://hdl.handle.net/10037/25498) [Master's thesis, UiT The Arctic Univesrity of Norway]. (Tove I. Dahl, supervisor).

Dahl, T. I., Sethre-Hofstad, L., & Salomon, G. (2013). Intentionally designed thinking and experience spaces: What we learned at summer camp. Learning Environments Research, 16, 91-112.

Dahl, T. I. (2009). The importance of place for learning about peace: Residential summer camps as transformative thinking spaces. Journal of Peace Education, 6(2), 225-245.

Partners

  • Torfinn Halloren
  • Lisa Sethre-Hofstad, Concordia College, Moorhead, MN, USA
  • Gavriel Saloman, Haifa University



Members:

Tove Irene Dahl (Principal investigator)