It is an initiative to create a positive learning environment as an important part of ensuring that learners are going to be able to effectively engage with what they are being taught in a place where they feel safe and supported. Setting up the right environment means that distractions are minimized and creativity and curiosity are encouraged, providing the optimum conditions for retaining information and making connections.

Open space learning or OSL is a pedagogic methodology used to enhance the intake of the target learners. OSL is a transdisciplinary pedagogy that is dependent on the use of physically open spaces. It is an open approach to intellectual content and the role of the moderator. OSL includes any kind of learning in which the participants engage with their own physicality in a workshop environment.

Open-space learning would bridge formal academic study with the practical, professional applications of theory in practice. Open-space learning avoids the “banking” model of teaching where information is programmed into students by an omniscient teacher. Traditional physical hierarchies of the seminar or lecture room are disrupted. Teacher and student are empowered to create an atmosphere where learning takes place in the interactions with peers, teachers, and, not least, their own and others’ physicality. This is learning by discovery: experiential learning. Open-space learning helps students to develop and enhance ‘soft skills’ in areas such as responsibility, sociability, self-esteem and self-management. It addresses intelligence other than linguistic, and learning styles beyond the auditory. It enables a social constructivist approach to teaching and learning, introducing dialogic and experiential inquiry between teachers and learners as the means of actively discovering rather than passively receiving knowledge.