Abstract

Today's students are comfortable satisfying their immense curiosity on their own. This capacity for independent learning is essential to their future well-being, since they are likely to have multiple careers and will need to continually learn new skills they were not taught in college. Students will need to feel comfortable working in cross-disciplinary teams that encompass multiple ways of knowing. These challenges require re-conceptualizing some parts of the educational system and at the same time finding ways to reinforce learning outside of formal schooling. In this article, the author presents and discusses some of the new learning environments for the 21st century, like: (1) the architecture studio; and (2) the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) studio for 8.02 electricity and magnetism. It is evident in these environments that students move from "learning about" something to "learning to be" something, which is a crucial distinction. Furthermore, in today's Internet environment, learning to be literate in multiple media is an important tool in learning to be. Thus, faculty must understand how to foster this new literacy to understand the new vernacular of students who grew up digital. (Contains 3 resources and 4 online resources.)

Citation

Brown, J.S. (2006). New Learning Environments for the 21st Century: Exploring the Edge. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 38(5), 18-24. Retrieved January 16, 2021 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/100450/.

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Keywords

• active learning
• architecture
• College Students
• computer literacy
• Computer Uses in Education
• Constructivism (Learning)
• EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT
• Energy
• Independent Study
• information technology
• Interdisciplinary Approach
• internet
• lifelong learning
• Magnets
• models
• Multimedia Materials
• teamwork
• technology integration