Education Space Consultancy

Providing expert timetable and space management consultancy services within the education sector

Why “Suggested Days And Times” Are Damaging Your Timetable Student Experience And Space Utilisation

By

I see “Suggested Days and Times” as one of the timetabling process that can stand in the way of creating a timetable that maximises the student experieince and teaching space utilisation. Not only this, but the process typically wastes a huge amount of department and central administration time all in the effort to meet these “Suggested Days and Times”, despite this process not enabling the institution to create the timetable that it really wants.

In the past requesting “Suggested days and times” as part of the timetable data collection process was probably the best or perhaps only feasible way of creating a timetable each year. Each department would spend a lot of time creating their own timetable and then request days/times for all of their teaching activities from the central timetabling team. This solved the problem of the central timetabling team needing to manually collect and process all the building blocks behind the requested days and times, resulting in the central timetabling process being more of a “room booking” process.

Although this may have been the most effective or only feasible way of doing this in the past, over the last 10-20 years with student numbers, choice and expectations have all significantly increased and the use of technical timetabling software now being the norm. Therefore is using these “Suggested Days and Times” still the most effective method of creating a timetable?

Below, I explore what I believe to be the 5 main reasons for why [Read more…]

Video Tutorial – Space Utilisation Survey Data Calculations – Part 1

By

This is my first ever video tutorial as well as the first in a series, looking specifically at Space Utilisation Survey Data Calculations. I have started from the very beginning of the data analysis process and will progressively go through the various ways you can analyse the data to find the results you are looking for to help uncover areas of underutilisation.

This video tutorial, focuses on calculating the frequency, occupancy and utilisation rates for individual rooms as well as a single group of data i.e. at institution level. I have also recently published an article looking at frequency, occupancy and utilisation rates which is worth a look for further information.

If you are interested in teaching space utilisation data analysis and are considering using a consultancy service to collect this data and provide you with an informative and actionable consultancy report, please have a look at my Teaching Space Utilisation Survey consultancy page for further information on how I can help.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vZMWb2h8DY&list=UUw5bdUeBfGWtoXfKMhklN6g

[Read more…]

The Pros And Cons Of Department Only Teaching Space

By

For the majority, institutions will have a mixture of central and departmental space. A central teaching space being a space that can be used by every department for teaching purposes, typically controlled and booked by the central timetabling team. Whilst a a departmental teaching space is a space that can typically only be used by the department that the space is assigned. Department only teaching space can be heated topic within institutions, with central administration departments and academic departments typically having a very different stance on whether they are beneficial or not.

Department only teaching space has its pro’s and con’s, and it is the balance of these that makes the decision and management of department teaching space a tricky topic. Therefore it is necessary to fully consider these pro’s and con’s and what impact they can have , to ensure the right decisions are made when it comes down to department only teaching space.

Lets start with the pro’s of department only teaching space 

  • Student engagement and the student experience

One of the main pro’s of departmental teaching space is that it also provides the department with an opportunity to engage with [Read more…]

7 Ways To Improve Timetabling Communication And Understanding Within Your Institution

By

Communication and understanding, can be two of the most important ingredients of timetable and space management. Without, all the effort put in to creating new processes that should improve delivery can end up at best at best less effective than first hoped, or at worst failure.

Ineffective communication and understanding within and outside of the timetabling team, will often result in both central and departmental timetabling teams as well those requesting timetabling or room bookings, innocently working against you. Not only this, but it is typically hard to even know when and why these issues have occurred without carrying time consuming data collection and analysis of timetable and space data.

Effective communication and understanding will help solve these problems and enable the institution to work towards common goals. With each person understanding what is [Read more…]

How To Significantly Improve Your Occupancy Rate, By Changing One Timetabling Process

By

Teaching room occupancy rates can be a tricky measure to improve upon as students can tend not to go to all their timetabled activities and you are unlikely to have a stock of teaching facilities that perfectly fit the size of your classes.

Despite this there are a number of timetabling methods that if applied, can have a significant improvement to your institutions occupancy rate without you having to drag students to lectures or spend funds changing the size of your teaching facilities. This article looks at what I believe to be one of the most important:

  • Don’t allow staff to request a specific teaching room

This one change could cause a huge improvement in your teaching space occupancy rate, as remove this restriction from your timetabling processes and you can assign timetable activities to rooms with suitable capacities – thereby improving your occupancy rate. Not only this, but by improving your occupancy rate you are reducing the demand on the largest teaching spaces, which are typically those under the most demand. I have provided a simple example below, to demonstrate the point.

Occupancy rateThis example, includes 6 classes called A,B,C,D,E,F and 5 rooms (Room 1,2,3,4,5). Everything is the same in both examples, except for in example 1 staff have been permitted to request rooms and in option 2 staff haven’t (as shown in the requested room column).

I have highlighted three of the cells yellow in both examples, to demonstrate that once the ability to [Read more…]