Education Space Consultancy

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

How Space Type Analysis Can Improve The Utilisation of Teaching Space

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To start this article, I will quickly explain what I mean by “space type”. Teaching space is a space type that in definition differentiates itself from other space that can’t be used for teaching, such as office and circulation space. Teaching space is then typically broken down further into other space types, to help those using/requesting/managing the teaching space(s). For example, computer labs, art studios, seminar rooms as well as many other permutations.

Once teaching space is further defined by space types and those requesting teaching space can specify the room or type of room they would like to use, the demand for teaching space begins to be effected by the availability of space within each space type.

This in turn, will cause the teaching space utilisation for each space type – and the institution as a whole – to be effected.

For example if you have 4 teaching rooms that are available 180 hours in total per week and 135 hours’ worth of timetable requests, then on average you could determine that there should be a 75% frequency rate (135/180). However, if one of these teaching rooms is a computer room and of these 135 hours of requests, 10 hours require a computer room – the utilisation of the spaces change. The seminar space should now have a 92.59% frequency rate (125/135) whilst the computer lab only has a predicted 22.22% frequency rate (10/45).

The difference is critical, as the first example indicated that by removing one of the teaching rooms all the remaining teaching activities could have been accommodated in the remaining 3 rooms. However, the space types (3 seminar [Read more…]

Why Do Teaching Rooms Have Low Occupancy Rates?

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Ensuring each teaching room is used as effectively as possible, involves understanding both the frequency and occupancy rate for this space. A previous article (Why Do Teaching Rooms Have Low Frequency Rates? – Teaching Space Utilisation Data Analysis) considered the factors that effect the frequency rates individual spaces/rooms have on low frequency rates, this article is going to look at the other side of the coin – occupancy rates.

Low Occupancy RateI look specifically at the different reasons for why individual teaching rooms can have a low occupancy rate, providing a starting point for investigating and understanding why, so you can form an actionable plan for improving the occupancy and space utilisation for your teaching rooms.

This article is the second in the series looking at the data analysis methods highlighted in the “8 Tips For Getting The Most Out Of Your Teaching Space Utilisation Data” article. If you haven’t had a chance to read this, it’s worth checking it out as these eight techniques will really help you to get the most out of your teaching space. Also, by subscribing to the Education Space Consultancy newsletter you can access the freely available Education Space Consultancy Teaching Space Utilisation Data Tool. This tool automatically completes several of the data analysis methods for you, once you have added your core data.

Ok, so when considering a low occupancy rate for an individual space the overarching reason is that the demand for this space does not match its provision – i.e. the classes/activities using this space are smaller [Read more…]

The Top 5 Blog Posts of 2014

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I hope everyone has had a great Christmas and New Year’s break and is now looking forward to the year ahead! I just want to start with saying thank you to everyone that has supported Education Space Consultancy over the last year, 2014 was an exciting first year for the company and I am really looking forward to all the possibilities 2015 will bring.

Over the coming year, I will be continuing to post a new article onto the Education Space Consultancy blog each week looking at space and timetabling management with the education sector. Before the end of 2014, I added a free Teaching Space Utilisation Data Analysis Tool  that is available to all newsletter subscribers and will also be continuing to make further resources freely available to subscriber members over the coming months. There is also a fortnightly newsletter that includes Education Space Consultancy news and offers, recent blog posts as well some interesting sector news, links and resources. To subscribe – simply add your email address and click subscribe at the top of the web page.

With the end of 2014 now passed, this first blog post of 2015 is going to look at the top 5 blog posts of 2014, rated by popularity (visits). If you notice an article you haven’t read before and would like to have a look,  click on the title and you will be sent straight there.

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7 Ways To Improve Timetabling Communication And Understanding Within Your Institution

 

This article was the most popular article of 2014 and is a topic that I feel very passionately about as [Read more…]

Why Do Teaching Rooms Have Low Frequency Rates? – Teaching Space Utilisation Data Analysis

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This is the first of eight articles that will focus on exploring the data analysis methods highlighted in the “8 Tips For Getting The Most Out Of Your Teaching Space Utilisation Data” article. If you haven’t had a chance to read this, it’s worth checking it out as these eight techniques will really help you to get the most out of your teaching space.

This article will focus on the first of the eight techniques, “Teaching Rooms With Low Frequency Rates” and I will go through the information gathering and investigation process I typically go through as part of the Teaching Space Utilisation Survey and Consultancy service that Education Space Consultancy offers in order to understand why some certain rooms have low frequency rates.

For the rest of this article I will presume that you a) have “actual” teaching space utilisation data over at least a week and b) you know how to calculate room frequency rate and how to find those rooms with the lowest and highest frequency rates. If you would like to collect teaching [Read more…]

8 Tips For Getting The Most Out Of Your Teaching Space Utilisation Data

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With the first semester coming to an end and with most institutions having completed this semesters space utilisation survey by now, this article looks at 8 tips for analysing teaching space utilisation data in order uncover areas for improvement, providing thoughts on why these methods are useful as well as a “how to” section for each, outlining how to carry out each data analysis technique yourself.

To accompany this article, I will be making a series of space utilisation analysis templates available to all subscribers of the Education Space Consultancy newsletter, that cover the majority of the techniques included in this article. Therefore if you would like to receive this for free, remember to sign-up!

In order to write this article, I have presumed that you have actual space utilisation data for all of your teaching rooms over [Read more…]