Education Space Consultancy

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

Is Your Department Only Teaching Space Damaging Your Student Experience and Space Utilisation?

By

Department only teaching space is typically seen as a very positive provision by those departments that have it, providing space that can be dedicated to a departments teaching, personalised to reflect the departments ethos and importantly help to keep students within the departments area so that they can continue to make use of the resources available to them – i.e. staff offices, department specific libraries/study rooms/computer rooms etc.

However, the upside of department only teaching space is also the downside, as “department only space” in its principle limits the number to the teaching activities the department provides. If the demand does not match the available timeslots and capacity that the space provides, then space and capital is being wasted that could be provided and spent elsewhere to improve the institutions provision and positively influence the student experience.

Another point to consider is the effect an imbalance of department and central only space is having on the timetabling teams ability to produce a student experience focussed timetable. Too many department only spaces and not enough central spaces can have the reverse effect an institution is hoping to achieve if the demand for central spaces is too high. In this scenario, the timetable will struggle to accommodate the teaching activities at preferable times for those requiring central times as there simply isn’t the space to accommodate them.

I am not saying that the negatives always outweigh the positives, rather finding the balance [Read more…]

Why Do Teaching Space Utilisation Rates Rise and Fall During The Teaching Week?

By

As shown in previous articles, there are many useful techniques for analysing teaching space utilisation data to determine how well space has been used on average during a survey week. However, one aspect these techniques don’t consider is how teaching space frequency, occupancy and utilisation change during the teaching week.

Why do this?

Any fluctuation in the teaching space utilisation rate during the teaching week will affect your ability to reduce/increase the number or size of the teaching spaces available. This is simply because the estate has to be able to accommodate the peaks in demand and in doing so, this equates to large amounts of space being underutilised during the troughs (low utilisation). By creating a timeline of utilisation during the survey week, you can interrogate and investigate the reasons behind the various peaks and troughs during the survey week and determine how to reduce the severity of both.

From a space management perspective equal demand throughout the survey week is the prime target, as this will enable you to amend the state provision to provide exactly the right number, type and size spaces to accommodate all the teaching demands without any oversupply. This in turn, will therefore provide you with an excellent space utilisation rate and ensure you are getting the most out of your teaching space.

How to calculate Frequency, Occupancy and Utilisation Rates by Timeslot?

To calculate your teaching space frequency, occupancy and utilisation rates by timeslot you will need to analyse the data using different methods to that used previously although the general concept [Read more…]

Why Is The Recorded Attendance Significantly Lower Than The Timetable Class Size?

By

Have you ever looked into a large lecture theatre and only seen a handful of students, all huddled at the front and thought – Where are the rest of the students? Surely a class of this size wouldn’t have been timetabled into such a large room?

There are likely to many instances of this happening every day in a large institution. Investigating why this is happening and resolving the issues highlighted, can significantly increase the availability of space within your institution.

Typically I found there there are 5 factors that can cause a class to use a teaching room with a significantly larger capacity:

1) The data used to create the timetable is inaccurate

2) Student attendance for this teaching activity is poor

3) The estate has a shortage of suitable sized teaching space for this activity, therefore this was the smallest room available.

4) Timetable constraints have resulted in this teaching room being the most suitable room. 

5) A timetabling error, has resulted in a larger room being timetabled when a smaller room was available.

To begin with you need to  investigate how each of these factors are effecting you institution occupancy rate and therefore the first step is to compare the teaching space utilisation survey data against the timetable data for the same week looking for differences between the recorded [Read more…]

Are There Rooms Timetabled But Not Used?

By

Answering this question is a part of space utilisation analysis that I particularly enjoy as the results can be fantastic, reducing pressure on the timetable and creating more usable teaching space all without spending any investment in changing space or impacting on the students. It isn’t often win/win’s are presented when looking at space utilisation and timetabling together, but I believe this to be one of them.

If your institution hasn’t done this before i.e. compare you actual frequency against your timetable frequency, then I would suggest there is a good chance there is a significant difference, as  I have found that without continual monitoring of whether teaching rooms are actually being used when they are booked, the control and communication over this issue is lacking. If this is the case – then this article should hopefully be of great interest to you and you may well have a great opportunity to improve the available of your teaching space.

I feel this example really helps to frame the problem and also highlight the potential gains that resolving this issue can resolve – If you have 2000 hours timetabled a week and 20% aren’t being used, that’s 400 hours wasted! If you teach 09-17:00 each week (i.e. 40 hours a week), that’s the equivalent of 10 rooms being booked and not used every hour of the teaching week.

That is a huge amount of wasted space, most institutions would snap your hands off if you offered them 10 free extra teaching space! 20% isn’t an inflated figure, I have seen many cases where the percentage of rooms booked and not used is much greater than this. By solving this difference, you are making extra teaching space available without making extra teaching space!

As with the previous articles in this series, if you are unsure of how to compare your timetable and actual (i.e. space utilisation survey) teaching room frequency data it would be worth looking at th [Read more…]

How Space Type Analysis Can Improve The Utilisation of Teaching Space

By

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?

By

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

By

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.

1

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

By

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

By

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…]

6 Methods For Ensuring Classes Are Timetabled Into Suitable Teaching Spaces

By

Timetabling is a complicated and occasionally (or perhaps often!) exasperating task for all timetablers, especially when other expectations are very high! One of these timetable expectations that is often taken for granted and seen as something that “should be simple”, is that each class will be timetabled into a a room that suits the class size, teaching pedagogy and equipment demands.

This article isn’t going to explain why this is more complicated that it an seem (although this is a by product!) but rather specifically look at this expectation and provide 6 methods for improving the rate at which activities are timetabled into the right size room, with the equipment the class requires, in the style that suits the classes desired teaching pedagogy.

As with every article, I welcome your input so if you have any other tips and methods, please add them to the comments field at the bottom of the article to let other know.

1) Timetable Data Collection, Ad-Hoc Bookings And Software Set-up – How Are Teaching Activities Assigned Rooms?

I have touched on this briefly already, but in order to assign the correct room the timetable data collection stage and timetabling team/person must request from every activity the information [Read more…]