EDUC 5843 - Creative Design - Day 2

EDUC 5843 Day 2

Open Office Podcast

We started the class by chatting about the Open Office podcast & sharing some of our drawings/graphic organizers. Being a visual person, I chose to draw some of the things that stood out to me, as you can see by the masterpiece to the right. Having worked in an open-concept office before, I can tell you that I appreciate the frustration that was felt by some of the employees...I sympathized with the person on the bottom right who had to go into the hallway to get a quiet space...that happened to me, on more than one occasion. It's interesting because the original goal was to get rid of paper. We chatted about whether an open office space and the pros and cons to having a workplace environment like that. People tended to side towards having a combination of open-office & more sequestered office spaces, with some going strongly to one side or the other. Very interesting!

All truth passes through three stages

1. It is ridiculed
2. It is violently opposed
3. It is accepted as being self-evident

• Arthur Schopenhauer

It was interesting when talking about the open office concept, and how it would’ve gone through similar stages. At first the idea was thought to be ridiculous and unproductive. People then violently opposed the situation; in the case of our podcast, some workers quit the company. And finally, it was found to be extremely productive, leading to similar work environments in the largest companies in the world.

My favorite part of class today was the "tetrad experiment". The tetrad is a tool that can be used for analysis and critical thinking on a topic. In today's case, we were examining different learning environments, both physical and virtual. My group decided to examine the car as a learning environment. Below is our brainstorm session:

Examine a learning environment

1. Identify - car
2. Discover - audio, changing landscape, primary function - for transportation, getting from a-to-b; could be multiple people or could just be one person; acts as a vessel to communicate, via phone, books on tape, podcasts; limited to number of people per car
3. How does it:
1. Enhance Learning - could be a quiet zone to focus; during a long commute, allows time for the opportunity to learn; allows for discussion, reflection, variety of bitching; Family trips allow for opportunity to play games, build relationships, develop friendships, absorb information in a playful manner;
2. Reverse - distraction elements to driving...the depth may not be there; your attention is divided, varied, inconsistent; all your senses may not be in tune with the learning environment; ex: if you’re on an important work call, all your attention is not divided to the call, as you’re multi-tasking;
3. Retrieves - family time; making time more efficient; real-life experiences; making connections;
4. Obsolesces - could be replacing the “family dinner time conversations”; could eliminate the need for traditional office face-to-faces or the need for a traditional office space; makes the 9-5 lifestyle obsolete; could increase employer expectations; eliminates personal time & the ability to disconnect

I thought it was so interesting how a car could be looked at as so much more than just a vessel to go from one place to the next. In particular, I think it's so true that thinking of a car as a quiet zone for thinking & taking time to oneself is a thing of the past. It's a dinner table, it's a work station, it's a time to make phone calls...it's so much more! I really appreciated getting the chance to think about all the different learning environments that are available to us & how we can best make use of them.