What Happens in the LMC?

To get a general sense of how many students use the LMC, I have asked student consultants to record, every hour on the hour, a simple headcount of users. During the 2011–2012 academic year, 4,351 heads were counted. Consultants also record basic information about the applications used, revealing that a range of publishing-, video-, sound-, and web-related applications are accessed throughout the year. Finally, based on reports from our equipment-checkout database, we know that we loaned out 287 items related to media production.

We know, then, that people and technologies converge in the LMC, creating the potential for connections to form, for networks to develop. Do they?

A Story of Distributed Composing

To develop a richer understanding of the kinds of activities supported by the LMC and of the way the LMC functions within the college, I am collecting various forms of qualitative data, including interviews and observations. In the following sections, I draw on my interview with RCAH student Morgan Torre to paint a more detailed picture of how the LMC supports students as they work on multimodal projects. I interviewed Morgan after encountering her in the LMC on a number of occasions.

While my interview with Morgan covered a range of experiences, I want to focus here primarily on a series of photographs (figures 5.15 and 5.16) Morgan produced for her RCAH 291 Creative Workshop, taught by a colleague I will call Adam. These photos were assembled in multiple configurations throughout the semester. Adam asked students to compile a selection of their photos into a book (figure 5.17), which was then printed on the MSU Library's Espresso Book Machine—a machine that makes single-copy, flat-bound books from digital files. At the end of the semester, a selection of Morgan's photos were exhibited, along with those of her classmates, in the glass display cases on the second-floor classroom corridor (figure 5.11). A few weeks later, they were moved to the third-floor hallway, whose walls are designed to accommodate displays of this kind (figure 5.13).

I began the interview asking about these photographs, many of which depicted local bands performing at local venues. Adam had encouraged his students to keep their cameras close at hand as they went about their daily routines:

The easiest thing, he said, was to just bring your camera with you everywhere. And so I would just go about my normal life. I would go to music shows on the weekend and see my friends perform. And I would bring my camera with me. And then I would get my homework done, but I also captured these amazing photos that, even if I didn't use these for an assignment, I still had them, and I still gained experience from them.

It is worth noting that Morgan had taken a class with Adam previously. One of her early experiences in the LMC was for a photography assignment in the first class. Morgan raised this point in the context of discussing her interests before coming to the RCAH, which included music, theater, and dance. She explained that when she saw other people doing photography and video, she couldn't "even comprehend the process." She explained that working with photography and video was

As Morgan talked about her experiences in the LMC, she mentioned a variety of people, including an LMC student consultant I will call Lionel. Morgan met Lionel for the first time in the LMC:

Actually, it was really funny because I didn't even—the first time I met Lionel—know he was a consultant. He was just playing on Illustrator. And he had this really cool design. And I had to make a photography book. And I had no idea what I wanted the cover to be. And I saw his design and I was like, "Are you using that for anything?" And he was like, "No." And I was like, "Can I use that?" And he was like, "Uh, yeah, sure!" And it's just so much fun.

Morgan did indeed use Lionel's design for the cover of her book (figure 5.17):

We sat down together and just, we just kind of like made it and laid it all out. And it was really, it was really fun. And I just, I don't know, 'cause technology's like, it can be scary, especially like if you come from a school that doesn't have it readily available. But, you know, kids here, they're not trying to be intimidating. They want to share it with you. They want to share their experience with you.

In a follow-up interview, Morgan explained that she and Lionel worked together to customize Lionel's design for her book, revising the color and other features so it would be more suitable to her purposes.

Morgan also recounted interactions with an LMC student consultant I will call Todd. Morgan knew Todd through classes they had in common the previous year and Todd also happened to be enrolled in Adam's photography workshop:

I trust him a lot. We were in a lot of the same classes when we first got here in freshman year, and so I would rely on him or I would try to convey an idea to him, and he'd reformulate the words so it made sense, because usually the way I think doesn't really translate right the first time.

In a follow-up interview, Morgan reported that she saw Todd's book of photographs during one of the meetings of Adam's workshop and thought that it was "really cool." Todd informed Morgan that he used InDesign to lay out his book. Morgan reported that she chose to design her own book using InDesign because of the results Todd had achieved. They made arrangements to meet in the LMC so that Todd could help her.

Morgan also made arrangements to meet with another classmate (I will call her Ann) in the LMC. Knowing that Ann was proficient in Photoshop, Morgan sought her help adjusting the skin tones for various photographs destined for her book. While they were there, Ann worked on her own book, receiving periodic feedback from Morgan.

Morgan exhibited some of the photographs she took for Adam's workshop at a cultural event in her hometown, a midsize city about ninety minutes away from campus. She chose to print the photos for this event at the LMC because she believed LMC consultants would provide a particular kind of support:

I feel much more comfortable coming here, where I can talk to people that I know, and they can look at my work and can actually discuss creative processes with me rather than just going to Kinkos, and all their job is to ask, "How big do you want it?" and I have to worry about what if it doesn't look right? What if it looks really pixelated? Or because one of the biggest problems is that sometimes your photos turn out really dark, and when you need to lighten them, and at the LMC people would tell me that, you know, they would be able to tell that's what you need to have done. And I feel like that's a lot of what the LMC's job is really to get you into places that you never thought you could go.

As the director of the LMC, I find Morgan's account of her experiences in the LMC very exciting. Morgan seems to value the kinds of support the LMC provides, and she mentions a range of activities—talking, making, and collaborating—that I consider to be consonant with the core of the LMC's mission. Finally, Morgan describes many of her experiences in the LMC as "fun," indicating that the LMC might be successful in achieving its goal of providing an informal learning space that students find enjoyable. In the sections that follow, I try to read Morgan's account through the related lenses of actor network theory and of ecologies.

Learning and Composing as a Distributed Process

As I mentioned earlier, we know the LMC is a space that brings together students, knowledgeable peer consultants, and multiple kinds of technologies. But what happens when these things converge? Do these heterogeneous elements ever come together to form larger networks? Morgan's account suggests that they do. A salient theme in Morgan's account is the formation of complex networks comprised of people, technologies, compositions, curricular structures, and spaces.

People. We might begin with people. Limiting the focus, for the time being, on what happens within the LMC, we know that at least three people contributed to Morgan's composing process—Lionel, Todd, and Ann—each of whom has multiple identities. They are consultants, friends, classmates, and fellow composers. These various identities suggest various kinds of relationships that might form in the LMC:

composer <—> consultant

composer <—> classmate

composer <—> friend

composer <—> composer

Again, these identities are not mutually exclusive. In Morgan's account, Todd is a classmate, fellow composer, friend, and student consultant.

The individuals who populate Morgan's account make multiple kinds of contributions. They provide technical assistance. They provide feedback on Morgan's compositions. They "reformulate" Morgan's ideas so that those ideas become clearer. They intentionally or inadvertently share compositions (in the sense that they make their compositions available for others to see). The LMC seems to foster "the development of mentoring or knowledge-sharing relationships," one of the "self-initiated learning processes" identified by Barron (2006, p. 193). But the interactions Morgan describes go beyond knowledge-sharing. Morgan secures permission from Lionel to use his design as the cover for her book. The two of them subsequently customize Lionel's design to suit Morgan's purposes. Morgan and Lionel engage in a form of collaboration.

Technologies. Technologies are another component in this network. Morgan and Lionel both work on the iMac workstations in the LMC. Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator all make an appearance in Morgan's account. Morgan meets Lionel because she is able to see the design he is working on; thus Morgan and Lionel's connection is enabled, in part, by the twenty-seven-inch display of Lionel's iMac. More generally, Morgan mentions technology repeatedly as she talks about the LMC, referring to cameras, tripods, diffusers, the photo printer, and so on. Morgan mentions that the LMC mitigates anxieties surrounding technologies ("technology. . . can be scary").

Compositions. Compositions assert their influence in the network. Morgan is working on multiple compositions: her own photographs and the larger book that they comprise. Morgan makes a connection with Lionel because she sees that he is working on a "really cool design." Lionel's composition seems to be partially responsible for a new social connection, which in turn generates more interaction. Morgan sees Todd's "really cool" book in class and asks what application he used to make it. This leads her to interact with Todd and to explore a new application (InDesign).

Spaces. Spaces play important roles in Morgan's account. Again, this is particularly apparent in Morgan's interaction with Lionel. The LMC is a relatively small space; the 10 workstations available to students are in a single room and all of them face the center of the room. It is not surprising that Morgan was able to see Lionel's design: almost every screen in the room is visible at a glance. A different configuration (e.g., long narrow rows of computers) might involve barriers that interfere with lines of sight (Walls, Schopieray, & DeVoss, 2009). In his discussion of "studio-based learning environments," John Seely Brown (2005) observed that "all work-in-progress is always made public. As a result, every student can see what every other student is doing," leading to peer-to-peer learning, allowing students to "witness the wide variety of ways to approach a design problem" (3).

Speaking more generally, the LMC provides a space where connections between heterogeneous elements can form. Morgan has planned meetings with both Todd and Ann in the LMC. These meetings entail complex triangulations of people, compositions, technologies. These triangulations happen in space, in a particular space where heterogeneous elements can converge.

It is noteworthy, however, that the LMC is only one space that supports Morgan's composing process. Important activity happens in multiple classrooms (where she first meets Todd and where she interacts with Adam). Morgan's photographs are exhibited along with her classmates' work in glass display cases on the second-floor hallway, and later on the push-pin bulletin boards of the third-floor hallway. These corridors, particularly the second-floor hallway, are high-traffic areas, facilitating the movement of hundreds of students each week.

I see the visibility of Morgan's compositions in these public spaces as noteworthy. Rusty Carpenter, Leslie Valley, Trenia Napier, and Shawn Apostel (2012) suggested recommendations for designing spaces supportive of a "studio pedagogy," emphasizing the importance of creating "public spaces for the display of presentations and visual artifacts" (326). This is part of creating an environment that "immerse[s] visitors in their own communicative processes" and potentially helps encourage "serendipitous collaboration and feedback" (326). Earlier I mentioned the role played by visibility in the "studio-based" approach outlined by Brown (2005). The display of creative work throughout the College functions as a way of extending the studio approach into the broader learning community, creating more opportunities for conversation, reflection, and learning.

In a previous study of RCAH spaces conducted by Emily Altimare and myself (2013), we found evidence that the public display of creative work does indeed foster subsequent connections and learning-supportive interactions. For instance, when asked whether work displayed in hallways facilitates learning and fosters social interaction, one student reported:

Every day. That happened to me last week. Mmy friend [name of student] was in this class and all these posters were put downstairs, and thankfully she's in the next room, so I'm like "what is this? I saw that your name was on this paper" She explained what the project was. But, absolutely. I learned from that.

The "immersive" quality referenced by Carpenter et al. (2012) means that merely being in the spaces of the RCAH connects members of the community to each other.

To sum up: In Morgan's account, it appears that the LMC nurtures connections between people, technologies, compositions, and spaces. The composing process, for Morgan, is distributed through these connections. It is important to remember, however, that the LMC doesn't "contain" the network; the network extends beyond the LMC into the rest of the learning community. Morgan's connection to Todd is formed before Todd begins to work as a student consultant in the LMC. She meets him in a first-year class, a connection that generates a level of trust ("I trust him a lot because. . . 'cause we were both. . . in a lot of the same classes"). This trust, in turn, is supportive of future interactions, including those in the LMC. Classrooms and curricular structures are part of the network. Those who study learning communities would cite Morgan's connection to Todd as precisely what we expect from LCs. Students take clusters of linked courses. They form relationships. These relationships extend to learning-supportive activities beyond the classroom. And that's exactly what happens here.

Emergence

Emergence is the materialization of order through the interactions of heterogeneous elements in a complex system. As Margaret Syverson (1999) explained, emergence is "the self-organization arising globally in networks of simple components connected to each other and operating locally." Key to the idea of emergence is that "order is not created or determined by a single, central master 'executive' or 'brain'" (11). The primary examples of order that I am concerned with here are Morgan's compositions: photographs and various compilations of these photographs (a book and multiple exhibitions). Other relevant kinds of order include knowledge, skills, and friendships.

Because emergence is, by definition, a bottom-up process that occurs via interactions dispersed in time and space, it can be difficult to study. Moreover, there is an important sense in which emergence, by definition, defies design. Indeed, at first glance, emergence might not seem relevant to educational theory. Educational theory is concerned with helping us understand how we can create structures that are supportive of learning. Teachers avail themselves of the insights of educational theory as they design syllabi, assignments, and classroom activities, hoping that these scripts will effectively result in learning. Teaching, in this sense, is the opposite of emergence, since teaching is precisely the attempt by the teacher to impose order on a group of people (namely students in a class). Morgan's account, however, demonstrates that neither teaching nor design is inconsistent with emergence.

I see Morgan's initial interaction with Lionel as an example of emergence. In this instance, we begin with a less-ordered state (two people who don't know each other and are working individually on separate projects) and end with a more-ordered state (two people collaborating together on a single project). Something larger materializes. Again, this interaction is not merely between two people; it is a networked process that involves two people, multiple technologies, and multiple compositions, and all of this activity occurs in a particular space. This interaction did not occur because a single person scripted it. It was, in part, the result of a chance encounter.

Morgan's interaction with Todd reveals a different aspect of emergent processes. Again, no single designer dictated that Morgan would meet Todd, that the two of them would become friends, that Todd would show Morgan his "really cool" book, that Morgan would seek out Todd's help in the LMC, and so on. Nevertheless, larger structures supported these interactions. Morgan and Todd were participating in a living–learning program, which meant that there was a high likelihood they would have multiple classes together. It also meant that they lived together for a year in the same building where their classes took place, so there was an increased opportunity for connections made in class to continue to develop outside of class. Morgan and Todd become friends, creating a sense of trust, which in turn made it more likely that the two of them would continue to interact.

The existence of the LMC—an informal learning space to which both Morgan and Todd had easy access—was supportive of their interactions. The nature and design of this space was important. As a technology-rich space, the LMC provided access to the tools that Morgan and Todd required to interact productively. Moreover, the LMC, as a multiliteracy center, is staffed by knowledgeable peer consultants, and Todd was one of these consultants. He was actually paid to be present in the LMC and to support multimodal composing. Morgan's interactions with Ann in the LMC demonstrate that interaction among non-staff peers is possible as well. But the fact that Todd was available in the LMC at regularly scheduled times increased the likelihood that Morgan could interact with him in productive ways.