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through interaction with the world, people and things' (Ackermann
2001
). We also
acknowledge a historical trajectory of collaborative learning spaces, from Dewey's
concepts of 'continuity and interaction' (Dewey
1938
); Vygotsky's 'active partici-
pation in the acquisition of knowledge' (Vygotsky
1978
); Wenger's components of
'meaning', 'practice', 'community' and 'identity' (Wenger
2008
); and Abbott's
(
2005
) 'ecologies of practice'.
This distance between the everyday world and the world of play does not prevent
play from being real but enables it to be real. Like art, play both refers to and dis-
tances us from the world at the same time. We play against the world - and with it.
Thus, our learning place is both, fake and real, ordinary and artifi cial, fun and seri-
ous (Consalvo
2003
). Again, like art, play is a process which exists only as experi-
ence. Both activities refer to and distance themselves from the world at the same
time. Art is playing against, and with, the world, using material, objects and rela-
tions of the world but aiming at a quality beyond it. From this point of view, there
must be a distance between learners and the real world, even as they work on real-
world problems to bring works into existence, beyond the studio, and into everyday
life.
For us, play and learning are connected to each other, but the relationship is not
as direct as is sometimes assumed. For educators, this can be challenging. Players
can, and do, decide what is play and what is not. Play is most free when it is least
staged. External restrictions, aims or even learning outcomes imposed on play can
destroy it. Indeed, even those who purport to be in favour of play in education often
seem to rely on 'a Mary Poppins type of argument. A spoonful of sugar and the
medicine goes down!' (Avedon and Sutton-Smith
1971
).
We propose to resolve these apparent contradictions by locating our learning
environment in a conceptual third place. It is not a little bit real world and a little bit
space apart; it is fully real in the sense that play is real; it is taken seriously whilst
the game is being played. The learning environment is an individual place and a
collective place. It creates experiences that are visited repeatedly, cyclically, whilst
at the same time, no experience is ever the same twice. It is a place people want to
reach and a place they want to leave, a real place, a virtual space and a journey.
Students are open to this new playspace. In recent years, the students entering the
programme can increasingly be referred to as 'digital natives', a term coined by
Prensky (
2001
) to defi ne the differences between generations in terms of their atti-
tudes towards virtual environments and digital tools. As a result, a more blended
approach has been developed that utilises traditional studio and classroom methods
combined with online discussion and Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis, social
networking and learning management tools.
Students are required to use online tools to assist their own learning, starting with
the development of a blog in the fi rst year (Connor et al.
2014a
) to enhance educa-
tion by encouraging refl ective practice. Beale (
2007
) argues that blogging provides
advantages in terms of both pedagogical and social perspectives. For example, it has
been observed that blogging produces a sense of community amongst the students
because they can read and comment on other students' postings. The result is that
