From Co-Working Places to New Education Places

Abstract Common experiences and common thought structures of this new generation which often defined as generation Y/Z and millennials, considered to have quite an impact on education today’s and the future business and education life. We see that expectations and the needs of new generation is shaping the new educational approaches. Co-working spaces meets the different spatial needs of new generation users while offering more creative working environments. As Co-working environments provides a collective and inspiring workspace to people with different professions and interests outside the traditional-formal office environment, can it do the same for educational environments? What should be considered for this new function? The aim of this study is to provide a perspective for the process of evolving the co-working places into the next generation educational environments in parallel with the results of an international study conducted between the years 2014- 2015 in co-working places at Germany, Turkey and Austria.


Co-Working Places
The 21st century is a time interval when humankind have been exposed to many changes that have changed our daily life. One of the major area to see this transformation in multiple dimensions is the new kind of workspaces, with a term they received as co-working places. Co-working places provides a collective workspace to people with different professions and interests. Co-working users can rent a desk for a limited time in or for a day, week, and month even for a year instead of renting the entire office or building. DeKoven by using the first "co-working" concept as a meeting facilitation technique (American Journal of Play 2015) has also opened a new way for this term which later to be used for describing a working environment where business meeting and co-working will take place with the support of computers. DeKoven, by prioritizing "working together as equals" approach he was intended to support non-competitive co-working spaces rather than hierarchical and isolated work spaces (Rief, Stiefel, and Weiss 2016).Generally, the first emergence of a co working places has had a parallel development to the use of the Internet and especially mobile communication devices (Foertsch and Cagnol 2013). We can say that daily life technologies that have changed especially in the last years transforms the lives of people, not gradually, but through the thresholds. We see that this transformation has created significant break points between generations.

From co-working to co-learning spaces
A new generation growing up by daily life technologies (Oblinger 2008) which accepted as most effective generation in education and business until today, is born between 1980 and 1999 defined as "Millennial Generation." (Anon 2012).This generation has gained new skills and have a common history in the digital environment where new expectations come insight this regard. The opportunities for collaborative work and networking is crucial for this generation. (Pedro 2009). One important fact about this generation is they have never seen a life without internet (Prensky 2001). Assuming that co working places are emerging within the framework of these new-generation needs, we can say that similar transformations are at the door for education, another area where the post-1980 born generation is influential. It is seen that the expectation of this new student profile, which has experienced from the early ages to be "learners" in formal and informal education environments surrounded by computer and communication technologies, is also quite high. Y Generation carries both characters and anticipations together (Woods et al. 2011). Students born and raised within the culture of technology, need the use of these technologies in educational settings (Prensky 2001).
In parallel with the results of an International Research Project (BAP)conducted between 2014-2015 in 3 spaces in Turkey-Istanbul, 7 spaces in Vienna -Austria, 8 spaces in Berlin-Germany with a total number of 18, in this paper we want to provide a perspective for the process of evolving the coworking places into the next generation educational environments based on the major findings.
Especially in higher education, it draws attention of a form of collective structure in learning among the new generation. One of the important findings of the research was the natural learning environments that spontaneously formed in the co-working spaces. (Curaoğlu & Tütüncü, 2016). Spatial arrangements of co-working places have been found to be effective in the emergence of these informal collective learning environments. As a social communication medium, it is very important for this generation to establish links and share with other stakeholders in the field of education. Time spent in the same medium, after a while, sets the stage for common business partnerships and short-term learning environments for co-workers those sitting at the closer tables. Learning from each other in an informal way is one the most important opportunities of co-working spaces which also supported by collective event areas. These places are both creating a communication channel for new generation and intertwining of different disciplines in embedded in social relationships at the same environment, feeding from each other to ensure the emergence of new and original ideas.

Conclusion
We can say that we are approaching a turnaround to observe opportunities created for informal educational environments offered by co-working places where we can may entitle co-learning places. These co-learning places offers an opportunity for learners to encounter each other within the same or different learning groups or communities at non-institutional places at different times. This way of doing business out of a formal office, as we know it, can let us bring a part of education out of a same class, same students and same instructors.