learning spaces

EDUCAUSE has an ongoing project worth highlighting – “Photojournalism of Your Learning Spaces” asks students and staff at universities and colleges to photograph positive and negative aspects of their learning environments and and upload them to Flickr, tagged publicly with “learningspaces” or “learning_spaces.” Although many of the photos don’t have explanatory notes that would help the viewer understand what works or doesn’t work in a particular instructional space, it’s still useful to see campuses, libraries, and classrooms from a student perspective, as well as the vast array of often uncomfortable learning configurations available. Several thousand images have been added thus far. Here’s an example of the problematic “packed in like sardines around a giant pole” effect:

This project brings to mind fieldwork and self-documentation research methods used by Foster and Gibbons in Studying Students: The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester.