University space planning and space-type profiles

Universities planning the provision of space for their teaching requirements need to do so in a fashion that reduces capital and maintenance costs whilst still providing a high-quality level of service. Space plans should aim to provide sufficient capacity without incurring excessive costs due to over-capacity. A simple measure used to estimate over-provision is utilisation. Essentially, the utilisation is the fraction of seats that are used in practice, or the ratio of demand to supply. However, studies usually find that utilisation is low, often only 20–40%, and this is suggestive of significant over-capacity.

Our previous work has provided methods to improve such space planning. They identify a critical level of utilisation as the highest level that can be achieved whilst still reliably satisfying the demand for places to allocate teaching events. In this paper, we extend this body of work to incorporate the notions of event-types and space-types. Teaching events have multiple ‘event-types’, such as lecture, tutorial, workshop, etc., and there are generally corresponding space-types. Matching the type of an event to a room of a corresponding space-type is generally desirable. However, realistically, allocation happens in a mixed space-type environment where teaching events of a given type are allocated to rooms of another space-type; e.g., tutorials will borrow lecture theatres or workshop rooms.

We propose a model and methodology to quantify the effects of space-type mixing and establish methods to search for better space-type profiles; where the term “space-type profile” refers to the relative numbers of each type of space. We give evidence that these methods have the potential to improve utilisation levels. Hence, the contribution of this paper is twofold. Firstly, we present informative studies of the effects of space-type mixing on utilisation, and critical utilisations. Secondly, we present straightforward though novel methods to determine better space-type profiles, and give an example in which the resulting profiles are indeed significantly improved.

Towards Improving the Utilisation of University Teaching Space

There is a perception that teaching space in universities is a rather scarce resource. However, some studies have revealed that in many institutions it is actually chronically under-used. Often, rooms are occupied only half the time, and even when in use they are often only half full. This is usually measured by the ‘utilization’ which is defined as the percentage of available ‘seat-hours’ that are employed. Within real institutions, studies have shown that this utilization can often take values as low as 20–40%. One consequence of such a low level of utilization is that space managers are under pressure to make more efficient use of the available teaching space. However, better management is hampered because there does not appear to be a good understanding within space management (near-term planning) of why this happens. This is accompanied, within space planning (long-term planning) by a lack of experise on how best to accommodate the expected low utilizations. This motivates our two main goals: (i) To understand the factors that drive down utilizations, (ii) To set up methods to provide better space planning. Here, we provide quantitative evidence that constraints arising from timetabling and location requirements easily have the potential to explain the low utilizations seen in reality. Furthermore, on considering the decision question ‘Can this given set of courses all be allocated in the available teaching space?’ we find that the answer depends on the associated utilization in a way that exhibits threshold behaviour: There is a sharp division between regions in which the answer is ‘almost always yes’ and those of ‘almost always no’. Through analysis and understanding of the space of potential solutions, our work suggests that better use of space within universities will come about through an understanding of the effects of timetabling constraints and when it is statistically likely that it will be possible for a set of courses to be allocated to a particular space. The results presented here provide a firm foundation for university managers to take decisions on how space should be managed and planned for more effectively. Our multi-criteria approach and new methodology together provide new insight into the interaction between the course timetabling problem and the crucial issue of space planning.

Improving the utilisation of University teaching space

There is a perception that teaching space in universities is a rather scarce resource. However, some studies have revealed that in many institutions it is actually chronically under-used. Often, rooms are occupied only half the time, and even when in use they are often only half full. This is usually measured by the “utilisation” which is basically the percentage of available ’seat-hours’ that are employed. In real institutions, this utilisation can often takes values as low as 20-40%. One consequence of such low utilisation is that space managers are under pressure to make a more efficient use of the available teaching space. However, better management is hampered because there does not appear to be a good understanding within space management (near-term planning) of why this happens. Nor, a good basis within space planning (long-term planning) of how best to accommodate the expected low utilisations. This motivates our two main goals: (i) To understand the factors that drive down utilisations, (ii) To set up methods to provide better space planning. Here, we provide quantitative evidence that constraints arising from timetabling and location requirements easily have the potential to explain the low utilisations seen in reality. Furthermore, on considering the decision question “Can this given set of courses all be allocated in the available teaching space?” we find that the answer depends on the associated utilisation in a way that exhibits threshold behaviour: There is a sharp division between regions in which the answer is “almost always yes” and those of “almost always no”. Our work suggests that progress in space management and planning will arise from an integrated approach; combining purely space issues with restrictions representing an aggregated or abstracted version of key constraints such as timetabling or location, and

Women's History Review:Special Issue: Family, Private Life and Sexuality

A collection of essays based on the conference of the International Federation for Research in Women's History which was held in Queen's University Belfast in August 2003.

Dialogicality in university classroom talk

University classroom talk is a collaborative struggle to make meaning. Taking the perspectival nature of interaction as central, this paper presents an investigation of the genre of spoken academic discourse and in particular the types of activities which are orientated to the goal of collaborative ideas or tasks, such as seminars, tutorials, workshops. The purpose of the investigation was to identify examples of dialogicality through an examination of stance-taking. The data used in this study is a spoken corpus of academic English created from recordings of a range of subject discipline classrooms at a UK university. A frequency-based approach to recurrent word sequences (lexical bundles) was used to identify signals of epistemic and attitudinal stance and to initiate an exploration of the features of elaboration. Findings of quantitative and qualitative analyses reveal some similarities and differences between this study and those of US based classroom contexts in relation to the use and frequency of lexical bundles. Findings also highlight the process that elaboration plays in grounding perspectives and negotiating alignment of interactants. Elaboration seems to afford the space for the enactment of student stance in relation to the tutor embodiment of discipline knowledge.