What exactly is an Open-Space session?
Open-space Learning, or OSL, is a pedagogic methodology. OSL is an interdisciplinary, or better, a transdisciplinary, pedagogy, that seeks to challenge the lecture and seminar mode that dominates as the teaching orthodoxy in some universities. The pedagogy is dependent on the use of physically 'open' spaces - in the sense that tables and chairs are absent - and an 'open' approach to intellectual content and the role of the tutor.
Participants in OSL, typically but not exclusively, learn in an 'embodied' way. Thomas Docherty writes the following in his introduction to the recent publication on the subject: 'In OSL we open public space as well as the private spaces in which we learn. The project explores how it is we can enhance what is fashionably called the student experience of learning. Experience involves risk-taking, it involves experiment, it involves not knowing the outcome of particular areas of exploration, but being willing to take the opportunity that the opening of a space affords them... OSL is an opening to time and to history. It offers, maybe for the first time in our times, the real risk of a student experience.'
The workshop is the fundamental activity in pedagogic interaction between facilitator and participant in OSL. The workshop is best described as 'a teaching and learning session that takes place in an environment in which participants can engage actively with the learning materials that are that session’s focus. Such materials might include text, but they might also include props, objects, and audio-visual materials. Participants work independently, or in small groups, with these materials in order to fashion or create their own knowledge. The workshop allows the participants to become the producers of knowledge. The space itself is fundamental in preventing the reformation of the rigidly hierarchical space of lecture theatre and seminar room.'
- Wikipedia
Participants in OSL, typically but not exclusively, learn in an 'embodied' way. Thomas Docherty writes the following in his introduction to the recent publication on the subject: 'In OSL we open public space as well as the private spaces in which we learn. The project explores how it is we can enhance what is fashionably called the student experience of learning. Experience involves risk-taking, it involves experiment, it involves not knowing the outcome of particular areas of exploration, but being willing to take the opportunity that the opening of a space affords them... OSL is an opening to time and to history. It offers, maybe for the first time in our times, the real risk of a student experience.'
The workshop is the fundamental activity in pedagogic interaction between facilitator and participant in OSL. The workshop is best described as 'a teaching and learning session that takes place in an environment in which participants can engage actively with the learning materials that are that session’s focus. Such materials might include text, but they might also include props, objects, and audio-visual materials. Participants work independently, or in small groups, with these materials in order to fashion or create their own knowledge. The workshop allows the participants to become the producers of knowledge. The space itself is fundamental in preventing the reformation of the rigidly hierarchical space of lecture theatre and seminar room.'
- Wikipedia
What to expect at our "stationed open space" at AASSA 2014
We believe firmly in interactive, collaborative, organic learning spaces where the roles of "presenter" and "audience" are flipped on their heads.
We are greedy and selfish: we want to learn as much from you as we hope you learn from us.
Sequence of Events
We are greedy and selfish: we want to learn as much from you as we hope you learn from us.
Sequence of Events
- Opening presentation, Mindsets for Modern Learning: Joyce Pereira and Bill Tolley
- Stationed Open Space: 7 in 1 interactive learning space facilitated by the ISC team.
- Unconference: Time permitting, we will move beyond our planned sessions and mini-presentations and open the space to any ideas that arise from our collaboration.