Modern Memory Palaces for a Collaborative Economy

Commenting on our world’s new collaborative economy and the rise of collaborative workspaces, the final keynote speaker at the 3rd Biennial National Forum on Active Learning Classrooms, Thomas Fisher, made his case for a pedagogy that matches these significant, technology-enabled changes and creates a space for higher education in a world where our new digital technologies and the internet are rapidly replacing other long-established institutions. Fisher is a professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Minnesota where he serves as the Dean of the College of Design. The other examples he mentioned of institutions that, in his words, “the internet has rolled over” are the music industry, journalism, and banking. I assume by “rolled over” he meant forced to radically change in order to survive, for which a strong case can be made. He may as well have added the telephone companies, television and cinema, and the travel industry, and I imagine there are others that could be on that list.

His point, mindful of these rapid changes and those yet to come, is that to stay a viable option for people who want to learn in the most effective way possible, higher education needs to offer something that, as yet at least, the online world cannot, and that is not large volumes of information communicated through lectures, but rather a chance to interact collaboratively with a living community of people who can solve problems and create new ideas. To further this end, as an architect and designer, Fisher advised creating new or repurposing old classroom spaces to create an environment that stimulated all the learners’ senses. There the collaborative, active learning could create something like a medieval “memory palace.” This is a mnemonic technique that dates back to the Middle Ages in which the learner would imaginatively construct a multi-roomed palace in which to “place” the objects, that is, memories, which the learner wished to remember, attaching facts and concepts to imaginary, but visual objects and rooms.

In effect, if the space where the collaborative learning occurs is visually, auditorily, or perhaps even olfactorily engaging, then the students will connect the ideas and concepts arrived at with these sensations of pleasing sights, sounds, and smells. If I understand his argument, then the goal is not to assume other sensations in the environment where the learning is going on are competing with the learning or distracting from it (and, therefore, the learning needs to occur in an unstimulating place), but rather, these other sensations contribute to it.