Our Love to learn competition might have finished earlier this month, but our thinking about learning doesn't stop there. We spoke with Stephanie Bolt, a Senior External Moderator with University Arts London and part of a team working on the REBEL framework - recognition of experience based education and learning, to get her thoughts on what the future of learning might look like.

To get the most out of this blog, please watch the short clip below beforehand.

What might the future of learning look like?

Caught in the question: ‘what the future of learning might look like’ are pointers about the ‘future’ of learning and what this might ‘look’ like. When we met Professor Emeritus RL Gregory he spoke passionately about all arts based learning needing a grounding in an understanding of the mechanics of the eye and brain. The psychology of seeing. An un-learning of a most familiar tool: to stop, take stock, blink and consider how and why we view and frame through the lens of our eye.

There is a duty moving forward to future proof, to un-teach that which we are taught or tempted to see through habit

What you think the emerging trends in learning are and where you think the growth areas are likely to be?

To better notice habits and patterns of seeing. To rise to the task of aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince, and try to locate the snake which we are told has eaten an elephant? Or is it a hat? By 2010 we’d noticed a trend in life drawing classes towards flattening perspective - as if the model was an image rendered on a screen. Why? A growing YouTube tutorial culture causing a modern default setting, towards a flatland. Many readers will fondly remember Monty Python’s Flying Circus’ ‘How not to be seen’ from 1970. Mr Nesbitt learnt the value of not being seen. Unfortunately, he chose a very obvious bit of cover. We all laughed but Mr Nesbitt has grown wiser.

If life imitates art, then there is a duty moving forward to future proof, to un-teach that which we are taught or tempted to see through habit - before the Login act. And a social responsibility on all sides to acknowledge how cognitive forms of Newspeak can too easily occupy the shadow and layers of more opportunistic, technocratic, future learning spaces. Co-opted by a magician’s use of retention vanish if we are not careful to data scrape and manage discovery. But handled honestly, echoing a recent animated discussion with colleagues at the Co-operative College, future learning spaces and learning communities can move beyond mimicry.

How might co-operative learning methods (and in-particular co-production) fill this space?

Beyond a bland discourse claiming inclusivity and accessibility whilst embedded in a hierarchical system - a simulacrum of co-production with outcomes defined - and, instead, be a channel and network for fluid powerful mutual wide ranging actions. Inviting a process of knowledge production, rather than a system of knowledge transmission, within an online portal that echoes in its design, access and contents the commitment on all sides to much deeper democratic dialogue. 

About Stephanie

Since 1999 Stephanie Bolt has co-created and co-run an experimental foundation in media arts with fellow academic/artist/activist Eric Lesdema. Stephanie is a Senior External Moderator with University Arts London Awarding Body and is part of a team working on the REBEL framework - recognition of experience based education and learning. Building habits for life-wide learning through a solidaristic and convivial process.