Digital and Spatial Education Intertwining in the Evolution of Technology Resources for Educational Curriculum Reshaping and Skills Enhancement

Abstract

The aim of this research is to deepen how digital education has been intertwined with spatial education throughout the evolution of technology resources. In the last years, the user experience has been improved by open-source, collaborative user-generated, and immersive content – starting from multimedia/hypermedia architectures to synthetic learning environments. This research analyses which spatial design principles have influenced multimedia/hypermedia, collaborative web 2.0 interfaces, and more recently the synthetic environments of virtual worlds. The evolution of technology resources supports the hypothesis of a continuous intertwining between digital and spatial education since multimedia/hypermedia architectures, in which spatial knowledge may play a significant role in web-based design according to individual differences in hypermedia fruition, prior knowledge in the field, and personal experience in web-based instruction. In collaborative user-generated content technology, visual presentation facilitates learning co-construction and spaces are intended as synchronous and asynchronous virtual knowledge spaces of communication. In 3D virtual learning environments, spatial interaction is really developed and may open full accessibility to further studies on digital and spatial education. In the joined field of learning and ICT, the main scope of digital technology knowledge sharing, and re-shaping, is the enhancement of digital skills based on experiences in educational activities and the re-thinking of the nature and the format of educational curriculum to implement more experiences in the digital – and, possibly, spatial – fields.