Absolutely, there is huge potential value to the physical learning environment. However, the problem is that right now, that is often not exploited very well. Most of my undergrad consisted of sitting in a lecture theatre with 300 others, listening to a lecture for three hours. That is not a good use of my time, and not something that offers fundamentally better value than online (in fact, online would probably be superior in this case).<br>
<br>Ottonomy made some great comments in his review of Anya Kamenetz' DIY U: <br><blockquote style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote"><p>The university felt inefficient to me because it didn’t quite get me
and my classmates to the level of “deep” learning that I wanted. My
classes were more surveys than deep analysis. We rarely got past
figuring out what authors were saying about a particular topic, as we
usually had more readings assigned than a couple days of class
discussions a week could cover and usually more than a students could
manage to carefully digest on their own. The other elements of the
inefficiency I felt are in the artifacts and networks my classmates and I
created. We each wrote dozens of papers over the years, but I don’t now
have access to any of the insights other students’ gained that they
didn’t mention in discussion. As I mentioned in my <a href="http://ottonomy.posterous.com/thoughts-on-diy-u-chapter-3-economics">chapter
3 comments</a>, the box of notebooks I have in the garage is a pretty
poor artifact of learning itself. Its contents need weeks of effort to
turn into something that I could share with somebody else. I want an
educational network that builds knowledge together, not focused into our
own notebooks and papers that only our professor will ever read. And I
regret not taking the efforts necessary to ensure my learning networks
would continue after the end of a particular class. To me, successful
transformation of this experience means better learning for individuals
and better collaboration for groups to get even undergrads to the deep
analysis that the valuable curation of perspectives makes possible.</p>Professors spend a lot of their effort designing courses to curate up
interesting analysis and comparison of high quality scholarship, but
the execution is weakened by this inefficiency. Students can’t get as
deep into comparing these perspectives as their professors wish they
could. Class networks are limited in space and time by the present
pedagogy, but they do not need to be. Outside institutions, learning
networks grow and decay organically as individuals’ interest in a topic
develops.<br></blockquote>
(<a href="http://ottonomy.net/2010/06/book-review-diy-u-by-anya-kamenetz/">http://ottonomy.net/2010/06/book-review-diy-u-by-anya-kamenetz/</a>)<br><br>Basically, I think that both universities (and conferences) should think about what are the things that are best done offline, face to face... things like experiential learning, group discussions, hands-on experiments, excursions, embodied learning, socialization... and what is best done online (watching three hour lectures, for example).<br>
<br>Stian<br><br>-- <br><a href="http://reganmian.net/blog">http://reganmian.net/blog</a> -- Random Stuff that Matters<br><br>