Spaces for knowledge generation. Final report

The Spaces for knowledge generation: a framework for designing student learning environments for the future project has been funded via an Australian Learning and Teaching Council Priority Projects Grant and aims to address the need to create learning spaces that are based on strong design principles, informed by student needs, with the aim of producing forward-looking, flexible and sustainable Learning Spaces. Integral to the process is fostering the adoption of teaching practices to support student-directed learning and knowledge production. Longer-term outcomes include strategic cultural change to university practices and physical changes to campuses to advance learning and teaching

Looking Back to Find a Way Forward: Teaching from my Ancestors

Looking back and learning from Indigenous knowledges in education holds the key to supporting change in educational spaces today to be more inclusive and wholistic. Indigenous practices, passed down from generation to generation, hold important knowledge that can be used in classroom teaching. My hope is that by using this Indigenous lens of education, a path for change will be created in the current colonial education system. In this paper, I examine how I view classroom teaching through my own Indigenous worldview and with the support of those Indigenous scholars that have been doing this work for many years before me. I highlight the ways in which Indigenous knowledge systems support education and learning in today’s classrooms

Reimagining the Airport as Classroom—Immediacy, Place, and Presence

This paper discusses a post-conference experience involving attendees who utilized airport space to debrief through face-to-face (FtF) communication. Their temporary spatial proximity led to an idea generation process of recalling, rethinking, and getting ready for what’s next. Literature about learning spaces, knowledge management, and the affordances and preferences of FtF communication are explored as they relate to using spaces for purposive conversation. The paper highlights a proposed debriefing model of immediacy, place, and presence. This framework allows organizations to leverage unique affordances of FtF communication and geography of the airport, or other similar spaces, to maximize engagement and benefit

Developing Learning Circles: ‘Sharing and Learning’ from the GENOVATE Project

YesResearch institutions, universities and organisations at large have a growing interest for gender equality and diversity to be integrated into all stages of research and innovation including strategic planning, promotion, recruitment, performance reporting and transformation. Creating and finding open spaces where these processes can be approached from different perspectives, in which multiple stakeholders can express and share their interests and experiences, and where critical conversations, discussions and knowledge sharing can take place is fundamental for advancing collaborative projects and actions aimed at profound organisational change. Learning Circles, therefore, are useful resources that facilitate organisational safe spaces where multiple stakeholders from different backgrounds, sectors, disciplines, and nationalities reflect, in a relaxed and collaborative atmosphere, about gender equality and diversity as collective projects; and their impact and relevance for/in research and innovation fields. The advantages of Learning Circles are manifold: they represent intersectional, interdisciplinary and even transnational arenas and opportunities for experience sharing, and knowledge generation/transfer.FP

Beginning at the end: The outcome spaces framework to guide purposive transdisciplinary research

© 2014 The Authors. The framework presented in this paper offers an alternative starting point for transdisciplinary research projects seeking to create change. The framework begins at the end: it distinguishes three distinct 'transdisciplinary outcome spaces' and proposes articulating their content for purposive transdisciplinary research projects. Defining upfront the desired improvements has profound implications for how transdisciplinary research is conceived, designed, implemented and evaluated.Three key realms of transdisciplinary outcome spaces are distinguished - situation, knowledge, and learning - and elaborated: (1) an improvement within the 'situation' or field of inquiry; (2) the generation of relevant stocks and flows of knowledge, including scholarly knowledge and other societal knowledge forms, and making those insights accessible and meaningful to researchers, participants and beneficiaries; and (3) mutual and transformational learning by researchers and research participants to increase the likelihood of persistent change.Positioning the framework in the field of transdisciplinary literature reveals that much of the contestation concerning transdisciplinary research and practice may be attributable to the diverse but implicit ontological and epistemological perspectives inhabited by transdisciplinary researchers, leading to a call for more reflexive and explicit attention to these and other formative influences (i.e. sources of funding, project motivation, or locus of power)

Guided generation of pedagogical concept maps from the Wikipedia

We propose a new method for guided generation of concept maps from open accessonline knowledge resources such as Wikies. Based on this method we have implemented aprototype extracting semantic relations from sentences surrounding hyperlinks in the Wikipedia’sarticles and letting a learner to create customized learning objects in real-time based oncollaborative recommendations considering her earlier knowledge. Open source modules enablepedagogically motivated exploration in Wiki spaces, corresponding to an intelligent tutoringsystem. The method extracted compact noun–verb–noun phrases, suggested for labeling arcsbetween nodes that were labeled with article titles. On average, 80 percent of these phrases wereuseful while their length was only 20 percent of the length of the original sentences. Experimentsindicate that even simple analysis algorithms can well support user-initiated information retrievaland building intuitive learning objects that follow the learner’s needs.Peer reviewe

Ethnography, visual narratives and learning ecologies. The 'Universidad Rural Paulo Freire' case.

In this paper, we present some of the results of the R&D Project called "Ecologies of learning in multiple contexts: analysis of expanded education projects and citizenship configurations" funded by Minister of Economy and Competitiveness (Spain). The interest of this project arises after considering that much of the individual and organizational learnings have been turning invisible in different educational spaces. Therefore, our purpose is to study the different socio-educational mechanisms that individuals and organizations put into play in different scenarios: schools, asociations, virtual academical contexts, etc. On this ocassion, we present some of the methodological issues and results of a specific case: "La Universidad Rural Paulo Freire de la Serranía de Ronda" (onwards URPF), a rural socio-educative organization. The ethnography is being developed in Benalauría (Ronda mountain range). This organization is focused in the recovery of traditional learnings that people used to have around the rural world. It is settled in a critical perspective that connects their educational actions under the approaches of sustainability, dignity, feminism, etc. The general objectives we consider for this project are the following: - To know life style of people in Benalauría context. - To understand the configuration of URPF group and its impact in the territory. - To promote learning communities of practice with other organizations. As specific objectives, we emphasize: - To review the conceptual frameworks those allow us to understand the practices of invisible learning in this experience. - To generate visual narratives those evidence the work and identity features of the URPF. - To analyse the life stories of the people who are part of this experience (as well as the collective story), for the understanding of socio-educational action in rural contexts through dialogue of knowledge, generation of democratic practices and collaborative participation. - To generate spaces for dialogue with other organizations, groups and people for the creation of networks and learning communities.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech