Higher Education Facilities in the 2nd Machine Age
“Form Follows Function”, as Louis Sullivan famously wrote. More accurately, it should. Thus it is worth confirming that we’re continuing to design Higher Education buildings for the functions that they’ll be performing throughout the remainder of the 21st century, not the functions they performed in the 20th.
At the highest level, it’s important to recognize that our clients are grappling with an existential question: In what Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee describe as “The Second Machine Age”, what is the place of traditional bricks and mortar institutions? When students can consume so much information online, so cheaply, from anywhere, on any schedule, why pay tens of thousands of dollars in tuition and living expenses for a residential educational? The answer lies in the differentiation between training and education. Our clients are in the process of losing their monopoly on the former, and should refocus their unique ability to provide the latter. Their buildings should follow suit.
MIT had the insight to see this day coming, and took the courageous step to post all their coursework and lectures online, free, for anyone, through MITx. Then it promptly turned around and asked its faculty, students and alumni, “What is MIT’s value when we just gave away the store?” Maybe that’s not an accurate progression of events, or literally the question posed, but it felt like it to those of us that weren’t paying close attention.
It turned out that MIT was on a little safer ground than most institutions. Their 2014 “Institute-wide Task Force on the Future of MIT Education” states “The Institute’s very existence is based on a grand and daring experiment in teaching. It is a hands-on, science-based, problem-focused engineering education that continues to define MIT’s educational model to this day. Founding President William Barton Rogers’ espousal of experimental and experiential learning in 1861 contrasted sharply with the tried and true method of rote memorization that had come to define a scientific education by the mid-19th century. This new brand of learning added context and utility to engineering learning. It also made the MIT model the global standard. This early experiential learning reflected the emerging constructivist theory of Jean Piaget, which argues that the interaction between experiences and ideas helps learners create their own knowledge. Renowned MIT professor Seymour Papert built on this theory to define constructionism, which expresses that people learn most effectively when building things and sharing them in communities. Regardless of the label, MIT’s commitment to hands-on learning is still evident today. In weighing the importance of MIT values and principles, faculty responding to a survey ranked hands-on experience second only to a commitment to excellence, and students ranked it as the most important.”
At the 2015 FIRST World Championships, our robotics team was lucky enough to hear Professor Woody Flowers speak eloquently about training and education and the educational revolution that will arise out of their fundamental differences (video embedded above). He was preaching to the choir, as you can watch below.
As our clients are discovering that the value they offer is education, not training, we as designers should reimagine how our buildings should respond. A growing portion of the classrooms will be team and project-based. Students will be discovering principles through experience, firsthand, and not only when pointed toward a screen at the front of the classroom. As a robotics coach, I was asked what I would like for our workroom. I wanted power, data, and every single surface covered in whiteboards, for whiteboards were where students communicated their ideas to each other.
Terra Nova Robotics team members, Ashley Asaro, Andy Snitovsky and Ashley Fryslie, working on their robot.
Terra Nova Robotics co-captain, Ashley Fryslie, describing her idea for an asymmetrical, multi-stage-lifting cable and pulley system.
Technology will allow educators to take their students on virtual journeys, anywhere in the world, and collaborate with other educators, students and industry remotely. How will this change how we design space and incorporate media technology? Inspired answers won’t arise out of choices between flavors of 20th century solutions. They will emerge through a process of problem-seeking, hand-in-hand with our clients, on an exhilarating journey of discovery.
The MOOC Revolution That Wasn't. by Audrey Watters, The Kernel, August 2015