Will Interfaces Take Over the Physical Workplace in Higher Education? – Collaborative Article by Corvinus Researchers
Representing a workplace perspective in the Journal of Corporate Real Estate, seven colleagues of the Department of Marketing, Media and Designcommunication - Dóra Horváth, Tamás Csordás, Katalin Ásványi, Julianna Faludi, Attila Cosovan, Attila Endre Simay, Zita Komár - recorded their self-reflections for a year. They shared their personal subjective views in a collaborative article where they used collective witnessing and friendship as a method. The authors are proud that their free writings got their place in the scientific discourse of higher education challenges.
The study is based on a collaborative autoethnography of the seven higher educators with an overall 2134 student encounters during the study’s time span.
Reflections suggest that the physical workplace strongly bolsters the personal experience and effectiveness of higher education through contributing to its dynamics. Spaces predetermine the scope and levels of human interaction of teaching and learning. In a physical setting, all senses serve as mediators, while, online, only two senses are involved: vision and hearing. The two-dimensional screen becomes a mediator of communications. In the physical space, actors are free to adjust the working space, while the online working space is limited and defined by platforms.
In the authors’ reflective terms:
Home as a workspace?!
Being together in the physical space
Although unable to be physically present
Deprived of the physical space
There’s a rage against… – A state of mind in the living room as a workplace
Sentenced to home confinement
Self-consciousness prevails
From behind the screens
Face-to-face contact cannot be taken for granted these days
Through the guided virtual adventure tour
Shall we fade in virtuality?
It is time to be self-critical
We are responsible for not acting…
Collective optimism – We will be back
After all, we are Family – The “familiar” workplace and society
Further information: Horváth, D., Csordás, T., Ásványi, K., Faludi, J., Cosovan, A., Simay, A.E. and Komár, Z. (2021), “Will interfaces take over the physical workplace in higher education? A pessimistic view of the future”, Journal of Corporate Real Estate, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCRE-10-2020-0052