FutureNormal: Moving Online

In a recent Content Centre article - FutureNormal: living in a virtual first world - Professor Nick Barter (Academic Director of Griffith Online) and Professor Chris Fleming (Director of Griffith Institute for Tourism) outlined some of the benefits of a virtual first approach to learning. As we move into the second half of 2020, and as we all continue to forge ahead in the online space, we thought it timely to continue this conversation by putting a few more questions to Nick and Chris.

Nick, you recently commented that getting academics to embrace the online world has been historically difficult. You said "it's been like trying to push water uphill." But with the pandemic this situation has changed. Could you please unpack this pre-pandemic reluctance to go online?

For many years now and pre-Covid a continual challenge in terms of enabling online was a cry of specialness that was undoubtedly supported by a lack of urgency and embedded habits.  To explain the lack of urgency; universities around the Western world have been able to grow in an almost uninterrupted manner over the last 20 years or more; thus, although there was the challenge of lecture attendance, there was also little external incentive to change or be more efficient as growth continued. Covid-19 has shaken this to its core, and it created a burning platform that realises a desire to embrace change as a route forward, because growth has been halted and it likely will be for some time.

Turning to embedded habits; learning and change generally require the re-wiring of neurons and the formation of new patterns and new habits of thought and in turn new habits of behaviour.  But when there is no urgency there is little requirement to change habits and thus the desire to rest in the current state is strong.  But now with Covid-19, old habits and old routines are not as valuable, new habits are. Thus Covid-19 has pushed against the inertia and is forcing a new state. In these times online is a new state that is an efficient and effective habit for a university or any organisation to now be good at, as evidenced by the organisations making money during these times (for example, Amazon).

In the past, we have seen this move to digital in other industries, particularly music and now we are seeing it accelerate into every industry.  So, after pushing the water uphill, Covid-19 has been the crest of the hill and now waters of change are flowing down the other side for all.

Do you get a sense that when the pandemic is eventually over (no matter how far off that might be) that we'll all just slip back into how it was before? Or have things truly changed forever? If that's the case, how much of an online world do we want or need?

The simple answer to this is it depends on how long Covid-19 continues to force us into new habits.  Given the time that this is being written (July 2020) and the experience of second waves, the answer is yes there will be lasting change.  While there is a lot of comfort in returning to the old normals, that comfort of return is offset by how badly impacted the country or business is and how many people have found the key aspects of the new normal likeable, no commute and greater trust in working from home. Thus, from a work perspective, many people have woken to the fact that they do not need to come into an office 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, to be effective. Many finance directors are likely starting to ask why the organisations they work for are paying for so much commercial office space that is not needed?  In this context, a key change we will see is a desire from organisations to have smaller, more collaborative office spaces and the associated desire to have people use their home offices more.

In turn, if we build on this view, this will lead to systemic changes such as a decreased requirement for central business district office space and this will impact the expectations of public transport and central business districts through time, they may become less business orientated and more populated with families.  Similarly, individuals will be happy to join collaboration online and it’s likely virtual collaboration spaces will pop up in suburbs (where people live and will continue to live because of Covid-19) so that they can join workshops with their organisations. Thus, the nature of office space will change and the associated travel to the office will change and it is possible that local suburb centres will get a boost from this.

Also, everyone has learnt that it’s not great, but it’s not terrible, to have your children study from home, for a few days a week or perhaps a month at least.  There may be demand for schools to be more flexible in their requirements.  In addition, we are going to see the advent of slow travel, individuals will travel to places for longer, the two-week quick holiday on a plane could be over, it maybe unjustifiable from a Covid-19 quarantine time perspective and it is unjustifiable from a carbon emissions perspective. Thus, tourism operators will need to shift away from time urgency to slow travel and in turn this will create opportunities for those involved in home management.

As you point out, there are so many changes to nearly every facet of our working and home lives. What excites you the most about where we are heading in the virtual world?

The thing I am most looking forward to, if it comes off, is the change to our patterns of behaviour.  The way that we will not all be rushing to be at a workplace at 9am or to get home at the end of the day.  We might be able to shift how we think about our relationship to our workplace and this may make for different types of fluidity in our behaviours, be that working from home, longer and slower breaks, working from our holiday destination, whatever it may be.  Our workplaces are our collaboration spaces and they’ll be geared to be that much more.  This coupled with the possibility that we might stop jumping on planes as much is also a good thing – our FutureNormal might be more collaborative, less commuter time pressured, more flexible with our home requirements and less carbon intensive - this is a supremely encouraging possibility.

What advice would you give someone who is looking around their homes or their place of work and is bewildered by this rush online?

Breathe, take one deep breath.