Education Space Consultancy

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

Audit Your Timetable – Using Your Space Utilisation Survey Data

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An institution’s timetable is the tool that determines where and when all teaching activities are taking place. Therefore, the timetable should also be the ideal tool to determine how well your using your teaching space – right?

Unfortunately, not. We have found that the accuracy of the timetable can vary significantly, with the number of timetabled activities taking place and the size of the classes occupying the rooms, often being significantly different to that timetabled.

Why does this happen? The reasons are varied; however, the bulk of inaccuracies are typically down to issues with the processes and practices connected to timetabling. Some examples of this include;

• Inaccurate and/or inefficient process for predicting planned class sizes, during timetable planning stages. There can be different processes per department or sometimes even by module, for doing this.

• Over estimation of the number classes required and the size of these classes, just in 

[Read more…]

The Impact of Inaccurate Planned Class Sizes on the Timetable, Students, Staff and the Institution

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Timetable activity class sizes are a critical element required for producing both a working timetable and a timetable that effectively utilises the teaching space that is available. The direct and indirect impacts of inaccurate or missing class sizes can be severe, to the students, staff and the institution. So what are these impacts?

Timetabled activity class size, smaller than required?

The impact of this is typically very noticeable, as if the timetable activity class size is smaller than the number of students that will be attending, there is a risk that this activity will be timetabled into a room with a smaller capacity than is required. The outcome of this is [Read more…]

The Timetable Says One Thing, The Survey Data Another…..Timetabled Class Size Vs Surveyed Class Size

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The difference between that timetabled and surveyed can be very significant, with often 100’s if not 1000’s of hours booked and not attended per week. This can equate to a huge waste of teaching space; an hour booked and not used could have been made available for someone else who needed it,  been used to create an improved student/staff timetable or even resulted in extra teaching space having to be provided when in real terms it wasn’t required.

The number of hours booked and not used is however not the only the issue that is worthwhile investigating when comparing the two data sets….

Over the last year we have carried out numerous teaching space utilisation surveys for HE institutions and for some a low occupancy rate has been recorded, with rooms often being used by classes that are significantly smaller than the capacity of the teaching space they occupy.

Why is this happening?

The survey data alone tells us that teaching activities are being booked in rooms that are much larger than required, perhaps suggesting that the solution would be to simply timetable these classes into suitably sized rooms – hurray, occupancy rate resolved, right?

Unfortunately, not, as with a lot of things the solution isn’t typically this simple.

Those in charge of creating the timetable are likely to be already attempting to fit activities into [Read more…]

NSS Q15 – 2015’s Top 20 Institutions And The 20 Greatest Improvements

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This is the third and final article that looks at the institution NSS 2015 results for timetabling related questions, this time taking a look at the Q15: The course is well organised and is running smoothly results. This is the final question within the “Organisation and management” section of the NSS questions and again timetabling is very likely to be a prominent factor that impacts on the students scoring for this question.

As with before only those institutions that have received +250 student responses via the NSS survey have been included within the tables shown below, however links have been provided below the tables that include all of the results.

Those institutions with less than 250 students have been removed so that those with larger cohorts of students can compare their results against other institutions of similar size.

This first table highlights those institutions that [Read more…]

NSS Q14 – 2015’s Top 20 Institutions And The 20 Greatest Improvements

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Following on from last week’s article, this article looks at the top 20 institutions for NSS question 14; “Any changes in the course or teaching have been communicated effectively” as well as the top 20 improved institutions. Timetabling is typically regarded as one of the key factors that affect this question, due to the communication of timetabling changes and the effectiveness of this process directly affecting the students. Therefore any positive and negative timetable communication impacts are very likely to be reflected within the results for this question.

15601597778_7450614c7d_zAs with before only those institutions that have received +250 student responses via the NSS survey have been included within the tables shown below, however links have been provided below the tables that include all of the results.

Those institutions with less than 250 students have been removed so that those with larger cohorts of students can compare their results against other institutions of similar size.

This first table highlights those institutions [Read more…]