What should we do about non-institutional learning environments?

I'm sitting in a group study room with a group of fellow research students, having a "Shut up and write" session. This kind of study room is a relative novelty at my University - when I studied for my undergraduate degree, there weren't bookable rooms for group study available (we would have made a lot of use of them, I can assure you). Our University seems to have realized that if they are handing out group assignments, then they need to ensure that students have the physical spaces in which to do them. My experience is that there aren't enough of these spaces - it's extremely hard to book a room for group study - as soon as the room bookings are made available each week, they all disappear within an hour or two.

And yet, the opposite trend seems to be happening in the online world. Ten years ago, if students in a non-IT course were asked to collaborate online, it would need to happen in a University provided space, simply because there were no other spaces known to the students in which to study. But now, students have a huge variety of online communication tools for both group and one-to-one communication. They are naturally going to these spaces rather than the University provided online spaces. I don't have the research with me now to back this claim, but it would seem that these other online spaces are (a) less restrictive than the University provided spaces, (b) allow for a wider range of types of communication (there isn't the institutional pressure to stay on topic), (c) give students greater control over how they communicate (research shows that autonomy is a big motivator), and (d) are just a better user experience - easier to use, more pleasant to look at, and simply more functional.

So what are we (as institutions, and as a community of educators) to do about this? Is this a problem? There does seem to be a knee-jerk reaction in some corners to insist that students ought to use the institutional LMS, because

• it's designed for learning: a lot of educators and researchers have spent a lot of time optimizing the theory and praxis of collaborating in discussion forums, and so it must be better,
• privacy is important, and who knows what will be visible to the world when students use tools the University doesn't know about,
• we can't control the activity, or assess it, or even know that it's happening, and
• we can't ensure that all students have equal access to the space if we don't control it.

But none of these address the core issue that we should really be concerned with - whether are students engaging in deep learning. Research does show that poorly designed interfaces reduce the quality of learning, and institutional LMSes, while they have improved dramatically, are still not well-known for the quality of the user experience. Facebook, on the other hand, has dozens, if not hundreds, of superb user interface engineers working constantly to improve its user interface in order to engage users.

It is probably safe to say that a space in which students have more autonomy, and which has a much more intuitive and friendly interface, is one which will enable higher quality learning. So if our goal is high quality learning then we should be encouraging students to find the best spaces in which to learn. We still need to worry about privacy and equity and those things, but they are more easily addressed. There are a range of things we can do:

• We should teach out students about how to learn, and what constitutes good learning. I wasn't taught this until I started an education PhD, but if students are taught this earlier, then they can evaluate the spaces available to them with an informed eye, and make good decisions.
• We should educate our students about privacy, as part of the professional ethics education they already receive. Don't bad-mouth patients, but especially don't bad-mouth them in a public or semi-public space. Or even a private group space where the bad-mouthing is recorded, and a screenshot could be made public by a disgruntled group member.
• We should ask students to register the spaces they are using for their courses, so that other students in the course can find them. This doesn't mean that teachers need to be given access, only that fellow students can find the spaces without relying on word of mouth. This prevents students who aren't as sociable as others from missing out on the group discussion activities. Assigning students to study groups can also aid in ensuring equitable access.

With these and other approaches institutions can facilitate good learning experiences for all students without needing to provide every possible tool that students request, and without taking a centralizing, controlling approach to students' online learning.