Education Space Consultancy

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

Video Tutorial – Space Utilisation Survey Data Calculations – Part 1

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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

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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

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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

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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…]

How To Improve Your Utilisation Of Teaching Space, Without Damaging The Student Experience

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I often hear that to improve the utilisation of teaching space the student experience will suffer. This simple thought, causes huge headaches for those trying to promote better space efficiency within education, with student experience now top of the agenda for most if not all. However, is this even true?

Well, I have found that it does not need to be and there are in fact many ways to improve your utilisation of space and not effect, or in some cases even improve the student experience at the same time. This article looks at one method of doing this, by actually decreasing the number of activities timetabled into teaching rooms, whilst not effecting the amount or the type of teaching that takes place.

To do this you need to ask the question– Are timetabled activities actually taking place when and where I think they are? [Read more…]

What Are Space Frequency, Occupancy And Utilisation Rates And How Do I Calculate Them?

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To start off the Education Space Consultancy’s space and timetabling blog I am going to begin with some basics – What are space frequency, occupancy and utilisation rates and how do I calculate them? 

Frequency, occupancy and utilisation rates are terms for measuring how well space (as in physical space, such as rooms) is being used. Each, provides you with a different piece of information that helps you to understand how well your space (i.e. a room, a building, or even your institution) is being used and why.

The Space Management Group (SMG) , provides some useful definitions so lets use these to start with – also, I recommend having a look at their website and in particular [Read more…]