It was a SEMINAR class. The amount of self conscious social work it takes
to rende that structure irrelevant to the interactions is enormous. It
made be very uncomfortable.
In teaching our theory-practices courses, Olga Vasquez led me into meeting
at a multcultural center where there is a big room we can organize however
we like and heterogeneously, with sometimes a big circle, sometimes small
work areas, sometimes a presentation auditorium (for student presentations)
etc. But I can get those conditions as a rule.
Also, a fascinating matter for me at present is the arthitecture of distance
ed facilities. We have two types here, both of which strongly afford different
kinds of transmission communication: The "educational one" is strucuture
just like a classroom with immovable desks with microphones on them. A
"Business one" has a little oligarchical semi-circle table facing the screen
and a big audience area behind.
We are experimenting with ways to defeat the architecturally inscribed
constraints, but it ain't easy! Phillip White's three class solution
sounded like a smart solution to a tough problem, but there seems to be
now way to beat the constraints place on us by least cost constraints
combined with the ideology of transmission education for which they
constitute the cheapest implementation.
Which might even get us into a discussion of the potential in the non-school
hours! :-)
mike