Learning in round spaces

Plymouth University's Immersive Vision Theatre

Traditionally, classrooms have been rectangular. Square buildings are easier to design and cheaper to build. There is a door at one end, some windows on one side, and at the front end stands the teacher, in exactly the right place to direct the educational process. Situating learning in rectangular spaces naturally promotes some forms of pedagogy at the expense of others. It is of course possible in traditional classrooms to create opportunities for learning to be driven by learners, where collaborative and cooperative learning can be facilitated, and where students can move around the room as they investigate and experiment, create and discuss. It's possible, but it has to be a conscious decision by the teacher. The natural default education mode in rectangular space classrooms is to place students in a passive and controllable situation, where chairs and tables are configured to face the front - the 'presentation area'. You can easily recognise this area because it is where all of the presentational materials and tools are fixed in place (whiteboard, projector and screen, teacher resources) and where the teacher tends to stand much of the time. Such organisation of tools and resources is fairly permanent and inflexible, and it is easy for teachers to lapse into 'teaching in the same way they themselves were taught'.

So what happens when we change the shape of the learning space? What if we make the classroom circular instead of square? Think for example of theatre that is performed 'in the round'. The action happens in the middle of the room, and all those who participate face inwards towards the performance. Many feel as though they are actually in the play rather than simply observing it. Change it again, and face the participants outwards instead, and what is the effect? Each participant experiences something different, perhaps unique and personal to them. This is the concept behind vision immersion, where 360 degree projection and surround sound provide enhanced sensory experience.  Learners feel more involved in the learning process, and each learns through watching, engaging, conversing and discussing. This is the idea behind the Immersive Vision Theatre at Plymouth University, a converted planetarium that employs fish-eye lens projection systems to render 3 D moving images on a concave surface. Audiences sit in cinema style seats, and their field of vision is saturated by the images, supplemented by surround sound. High powered Blade server technology renders the video in high definition and real time to create the illusion of movement and immersion. Sit there for long enough and you feel like the entire room is moving around you.

Igloo Vision 360 System

Another example of circular learning spaces is the Igloo Vision 360 portable round classroom (pictured) which I experienced at the recent Welsh Digital Learning Conference in Cardiff. The Igloo Education system uses five mounted projection screens housed within an igloo shaped tent structure, to create a digitally 'stitched together' panoramic video and/or still image display complete with high quality audio. Children sit on the floor and face the curved walls of the igloo to experience the full 360 degree effect of the colour, movement and sound. Imagine a geography lesson where you are sat in the middle of the scenes, experiencing the sights and sounds of the country you are studying. Or imagine a biology lesson where you see what it looks like to pass through the human arterial system as a red blood corpuscle. It's true that the experiences we remember most in school are those that impact on all our senses. Such technology can do this. It is quite expensive though, and investing in a system could make a sizeable dent in an average school's annual budget.  However, those schools who decide to either purchase or create their own circular spaces will probably discover that - whether they have projection systems in them or not - round spaces can radically change the format of lessons and can challenge the perspective of just about any educator who participates.

Photos by Mike Smail and Igloo Vision


Learning in round spaces by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.