Living–Learning Communities

As a residential college, the RCAH is a "learning community" (LC). The distinguishing characteristic of LCs is that they provide students a set of common experiences that extend beyond a single course. The simplest form of an LC is a pair of linked courses; for instance, the same group of students might enroll in a writing course and a history course (Tinto 2003). The RCAH is actually a special kind of LC known as a "living–learning community" (LLC)—a learning community that includes a residential component. In this model, students participate in shared academic experiences and live proximately to one another (e.g., on the same floor of a residence hall).

Research suggests that LCs foster greater success in college, as measured by a number of metrics, including grades and engagement (see, for instance, Stassen 2003; Tinto 1997, 2003; Tinto and Goodsell 1993; Tinto, Russo, and Love 1994; Zhao and Kuh 2004). Alongside this academic success, a number of researchers claim that LCs foster greater social connectedness. Tinto (2003) found that LC students "tended to form their own self-supporting groups which extended beyond the classroom" and "spent more time together out of class" compared to students who were not participating in an LC (5). Tinto also found that students adopted a more collaborative attitude about their own learning. Similarly, Stassen found that "students in LCs are significantly more likely to have contact with peers around academic work [and] engage in group projects" (602). Stassen (2003) and Zhao and Kuh (2004) also found that students have more interaction with faculty.

For my purposes, the most interesting finding is that, according to several researchers, the academic gains are the result of increased social connectedness. Social connectedness seems to lead to academic success (Pascarella and Terenzini 1991; Tinto 1997, 2003).

This two-part finding—that LCs facilitate social connectedness and this connectedness results in greater academic success—suggests that as we design learning experiences for students within the context of post-secondary institutions, it is useful to broaden our attention—to look not just at courses and course sequences, but at how we can foster learning-supportive activities that take place outside the confines of classes and classrooms. This broadened focus leads to an inquiry into the design of educational spaces, broadly conceived. If social connections are important, can we design spaces to support these connections? What roles does space play in fostering connections? Research on learning communities is largely silent, however, on these matters.

Learning Spaces

Largely independent of work on LCs is a set of conversations focused on learning spaces. Several strands of this conversation are relevant here. First, many space theorists challenge the assumption that space is a neutral container of learning. Instead, as Torin Monahan (2002) wrote, "The design of built spaces influences the behaviors and actions of individuals within those spaces. To a certain extent, these spaces embody the pedagogical philosophies of their designers" (1). Monahan (2002) and others (Oblinger 2006; Thomas 2010; Van Note Chism 2006) use the phrase "built pedagogy" to refer to the way space embodies pedagogy.

A second major theme is that we need to expose and critique the notion that learning is or should be confined to classes and classrooms. Nancy Van Note Chism and Deborah Bickford (2002) wrote that traditional approaches to space reflect the assumptions that "learning only happens in classrooms," "learning happens at fixed times," and "learning is an individual activity" (94). As architect Chantal Hall (2010, i) put it: "Education has been based on classroom-centered teaching, and in turn, educational architecture has consisted of box rooms and connecting corridors."

In contrast to this narrow focus on classes and classrooms, space theorists embrace the idea that "learning happens everywhere" (Chism and Bickford 2002, 94). This realization has led to an increasing sense that "informal learning spaces" are valuable. There are many different kinds of informal learning spaces, but they are typically nonclassroom spaces where students can come and go freely. Such spaces often blur the domains of learning, playing, and living. They often provide for bodily comforts, such as soft furniture and food. Many are "technology-rich" (providing access to resources such as computers, specialized software, etc.). One great hope for such spaces is that they will engender social interaction, including conversation, collaboration, and chance encounters (see Crook and Mitchell 2012; Hall 2010; JISC 2006; Oblinger 2006; Thomas 2010).

Most discussions of space are speculative, taking a deductive approach. They begin with a set of principles, and then they move to conclusions about the kinds of spaces we need. If learning is or should be a collaborative activity, for instance, we need spaces that can accommodate collaboration. The truth of the converse is often implied: If we design and build collaborative spaces, students will engage in more collaborative learning activities. Is this true? Discussions of space rarely cite actual data that would help us answer this question. As Crook and Mitchell (2012) observed, "There remains little direct observation of what students actually do in these spaces" (122).

Crook and Mitchell's (2012) own study is an exception to this trend, providing rich qualitative data related to how students use one informal learning space ("the Hub") located in the arts and sciences library of a UK university. Crook and Mitchell concluded that as we approach our understanding of such spaces, it is useful to adopt a "more nuanced conception of the ‘social’ in learning" (136). Based on triangulated data collected in their study of "the Hub," they suggested that we look for "four verities of social engagement," including "focused collaboration," "intermittent exchange," "serendipitous encounter," and "ambient sociality." In their explication of the fourth category, they wrote that "students appeared to gain inspiration or reassurance from merely being among others they knew were in a shared predicament: that is, one of intentional and systematic learning (i.e., ‘study’)" (136). Social ambience is particularly important for my purposes here, as it suggests that students perceive a more general sociality in particular places that cannot be reduced to specific interactions referred to in the other three categories.

Writing Centers and Multiliteracy Centers

One type of informal learning space familiar to those in composition and rhetoric is the writing center. Centers have long challenged the assumptions that "learning only happens in classrooms," "learning happens at fixed times," and "learning is an individual activity" (Chism and Bickford 2002, 94). Writing centers are nonclassroom spaces where writers go at times of their own choosing to talk about their writing with knowledgeable peers. These conversations about writing are essential to the identity of centers. Invoking Michael Oakeshott's "Conversation of Mankind," Kenneth Bruffee (1984) observed that "what the peer tutor and tutee do together is not write or edit, or least of all proofread. What they do is converse" (10). In her application of Bakhtin to writing center practice, Alice Gillam (1991) began poetically, claiming, "Like a fertile, overgrown garden, the writing center breeds conversations between writer and tutor which grow and spread in directions neither consciously intends" (3). Noting that, from a Bakhtinian perspective, meaning continues to unfold through dialogue, Gillam returned to the gardening metaphor at the end of her discussion: "In this spirit . . . we may act as 'merry' gardeners who cultivate the writing center as fertile ground for the play of language, knowing that things will inevitably grow out of control and that borders will need to be continually restaked but also that our labors will often yield fruitful rewards" (10). For Gillam, conversation has a social-semiotic momentum of its own, tending to exceed our intentions and expectations. This momentum is of particular interest to me here, as it pertains to the concept of "emergence," which I discuss below.

While many different stakeholders take part in writing center conversations, it is important for my purposes to remember that centers are student-centered spaces and that "student culture," as John Trimbur (1987) eloquently put it, provides "the social medium of co-learning” (294). Writing centers challenge a model of learning that places the teacher at the center. Part of this challenge is spatial. Writing centers are "third spaces," neither classrooms nor sites of private study.

In the last decade or so, some writing centers have broadened the focus of their conversations in key ways (see, for instance, Balester et al. 2012; Carpenter 2013; Carter and Dunbar-Odom 2009; Griffin 2007; McKinney 2009; Mendelsohn 2012; Sheridan and Inman 2010). Many writing centers now facilitate conversations about compositions that don’t look precisely like "writing" in the narrow sense of the word. These compositions might include words, but they also include other kinds of semiotic resources: colors, diagrams, charts, graphs, music, photographs, video clips, and more. These compositions can be described as "multimodal," in the sense that they make use of different modes of communication (visual, aural, etc.). Many (though certainly not all) of these compositions are produced with the help of various digital technologies.

Following John Trimbur, I use the term "multiliteracy centers" to refer to writing centers that facilitate conversations about multimodal compositions. The broadening of mission to include multimodal compositions parallels a more general turn in the field of composition and rhetoric (see, for instance, Anderson 2003; Halbritter and Taylor 2006; George 2002; Kress 1999; McComiskey 2004; NCTE 2005; New London Group 1996; Shipka 2005; Stroupe 2000; Williams 2001; Wysocki et al. 2004; Yancey 2004). We are still exploring the possible ways writing centers might respond to the challenges of multimodal composing. I have claimed that this transition is an invitation to reconsider all dimensions of writing center work, including recruitment, training, resource allocation, and space configuration (Sheridan 2008).

Networks and Ecologies

Conversations on learning communities, learning spaces, and multiliteracy centers converge around several key themes. First, all three conversations are marked by a shift in attention from classes and classrooms to the broader learning context. Conversations on LCs emphasize thematic and social linkages between courses and the way those linkages can facilitate the formation of a broader community. Conversations on space envision a "learning happens everywhere" model in which classrooms are balanced by many different kinds of informal learning spaces (Chism and Bickford 2002, 94). Multiliteracy centers are one kind of informal learning space. All of these conversations envision a learning environment characterized by rich student–student and student–faculty interactions outside of class. Additionally, discussions of informal learning spaces and of multiliteracy centers emphasize the possibilities associated with the creation of technology-rich learning environments.

Drawing on all three conversations, we can start to piece together an image of learning routines that involve highly fluid movements across a range of spaces including classrooms, lounges, cafeterias, commons, coffee shops, studios, labs, performance spaces, writing centers, and multiliteracy centers. These spaces are richly supportive of learning activities of all kinds: conversation, collaboration, performance, making, eating, playing. Digital devices—smart phones, tablets, and laptops—are interwoven into these social interactions. Information streams in and out in the form of articles, Wikipedia entries, tweets, blog posts, Facebook posts, and more. There is an ongoing flow of capital—social, cultural, technological, informational—throughout the spaces of the learning environment.

This picture differs markedly from the traditional image of the teacher lecturing from the front of a classroom. But that traditional image is a straw man anyway. The "sage on the stage" has long been a trope for all that is wrong with education. Against the teacher-centered, banking model of education, years of research posits a student-centered model of "active learning." But even this active learning model has remained largely focused on what happens in classes and classrooms. In this chapter, I am interested in exploring what happens when classes and classrooms are seen as components within a broader system of learning.

To understand broader systems of learning nurtured by LCs, informal learning spaces, and multiliteracy centers, it is productive to draw on discussions of networks and ecologies. In recent decades, a set of theoretical tools loosely categorized as actor network theory (ANT) have proven useful for the analysis of certain kinds of networks. For my purposes, two of the defining features of ANT are especially important: First, shifting focus from any single entity to a broader look at how multiple heterogeneous elements participate in larger networks, and, second, for the purposes of analysis, assigning humans the same status as nonhuman elements in the network (Law 1992). By temporarily suspending the special status that we habitually attach to humans, we can gain new insights.

The lens of ecology provides a different but related way of talking about the broader context for learning. John Seely Brown (2000) noted that "an ecology is basically an open, complex, adaptive system comprising elements that are dynamic and interdependent"—and added "fragile" to the list (18, 19). The processes that define ecologies are "decentralized" (Siemens 2003) or "distributed" (Syverson 1999). As Margaret Syverson (1999) explained, processes are "divided and shared among agents and structures" and also dispersed "across space and time in an ensemble of interrelated activities" (7).

"Learning ecologies" have been proposed as an alternative to traditional models that tend to focus narrowly on official structures of learning, like classes and classrooms (see Brown 2000; Siemens 2003; Thomas 2010). As George Siemens (2003) put it, "A course is an artificial construct, erected at the start of the term. . . and is torn down twelve weeks later"—an approach Siemens labels "start/stop." As an alternative, he proposed an ecological model in which "learning is fluid. It impacts other areas of work and life. It's ongoing." For Siemens, learning ecologies are "informal" and "tool-rich," characterized by "trust" and by "high tolerance for experimentation and failure."

Researchers who focus on K–12 education have pointed out the need to account not just for what happens in school, but also "the broader life spheres of an individual" (Barron 2006, 194). In her study of adolescent learners, Brigid Barron (2006) asked one subject how he acquired his knowledge about computers. His reply refers to family, magazines, the Web, and an after-school course offered by a computer company. Learning is distributed across a range of sites, none of which is school. Barron's learning ecology perspective led her to identify "five types of self-initiated learning processes," including "the seeking out of text-based informational sources, the creation of new interactive activity contexts such as projects, the pursuit of structured learning opportunities such as courses, the exploration of media, and the development of mentoring or knowledge-sharing relationships" (193).

To sum up: learning communities (students taking clusters of linked courses), living–learning communalities (learning communities with a residential component), informal learning spaces (nonclassroom spaces that enable eating, playing, studying, collaborating, making), and multiliteracy centers (technology-rich informal learning spaces that facilitate conversations about multimodal compositions) all aim to foster connections. These connections involve heterogeneous elements, creating complex constellations of students, teachers, technologies, raw materials, curricular structures, knowledge, compositions, and more. In this connected environment, learning and composing are distributed across sites, people, and things. Learning-supportive processes (talking, making, reading, etc.) emerge (materialize in fragile and unpredictable ways from the interaction of heterogeneous elements).

Classes and classrooms are relatively easy to study because they take place at predictable times and places and they involve scripts (syllabi, assignments, classroom activities) that can be analyzed. Learning ecologies, because they are distributed across time and space and do not involve top-down structures like scripts, are much more difficult to study. Activity flares up in unexpected places and is gone by the time anyone notices. In the sections that follow, I explore the case of one student working on one set of multimodal compositions in one living–learning community (LLC). I focus specifically on the role that a multiliteracy center plays in relation to larger networks within this LLC.