Proportion of the reachable universe lost due to delay. Toby Ord: The Edges of Our Universe (2 Apr 2021). https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.01191

Second topic of our course deals with openess. What does this mean in my own practice?

Since establishing my office in 2012 I’ve been proud about the open culture that’s been one of the foundations of my practice. In the context of architecture practice, this does not mean democracy. In the end, I will decide. But throughout the process, everyone’s voice is heard. Ideas are shared, discussed and evaluated openly. It’s not relevant at all if the best ideas are mine. I’m primarily in charge of making sure multiple ideas lead us towards a consistent synthesis – an architectural concept. The process is similar to that of evolution. Strongest, most resilient, most universal and most adaptable ideas survive.

In teaching, the process is different. There is no pressure to single out one concept to be realized in a complex process that typically takes years, involves the work of many experts and millions of Euros of investment even for a so-called “small project”.

In a educational setting, each student can explore ideas rather freely (under guidance) but is also alone with the ideas. This makes the process easier and faster in some regards but harder on others. As a teacher, my role is not to select the “best” idea but to reflect on the potential of each idea and let the student be in charge of his or her work. Sometimes the final concept is not the best possible, even far from it: a clear evolutionary dead-end. This is OK. As a learning experience, it may well be just as helpful and sometimes more so.

Architect’s work may be on one hand a personal achievement, but more interestingly it is a manifestation of a collaborative process made possible by a functioning society. A work of architecture becomes inseparably a part of the public realm regardless of ownership structure. Every building will join it’s neighbors to form a street, a neighborhood, a city. This is radical openness stretching out across almost unimaginable long periods of time.

Eight attributes of open pedagogy (Hegarty (2015):

• participatory technologies: socially constructed media such as blogs, wikis and other ‘sharing’ social media;
• people, openness and trust: students’ willingness to learn is fragile, with participation and interactions unlikely to flourish unless an element of trust can be built (Mak et., 2010);
• innovation and creativity: finding new models of teaching and learning that better exploit OER and more emphasis on choosing digital technologies and methods that encourage the sharing of knowledge and resources;
• sharing ideas and resources: an open pedagogy needs peers to share willingly within a connected and trusting and professional community;
• connected community: a technologically linked community with common interests;
• learner-generated: this requires ‘opening up’ the process to empower students to take the lead, solve problems, and work collectively to produce artifacts that they share, discuss, reconfigure, and redeploy;
• reflective practice: when students and teachers collaborate in partnerships, it facilitates deeper pedagogical reflection;
• peer review: Conole (2014) sees learners as publishers and users of a range of open tools, with peer interactions and critique embedded in the learning experience.

A.W. (Tony) Bates: Teaching in a Digital Age. Guidelines for designing teaching and learning. The book examines the underlying principles that guide effective teaching in an age when all of us, and in particular the students we are teaching, are using technology.

InternetNZ: Creative Commons licences explained. InternetNZ (Internet New Zealand Inc.) is a not-for-profit open membership organisation and the designated manager for the . nz top level internet domain.