Learning Resources

Abstract: The University System of Georgia has radically altered its approach to measuring space utilization. We here present the data set generated by the inaugural run of the new methodology, which shows tremendous variation in campus space profiles across the system. The data provide compelling evidence that thinking differently about space will profoundly affect college and university planning.

Abstract: As with all educational institutions, the visual identity of a Christian college results from both a professional’s design principles and users’ own experiences and associations. While the two may be related, they are by no means the same. A logical symbolic center for many Christian campuses, a chapel facilitates religious activity and carries emotional attachments bound up with the community’s sense of place. However, it is not clear how the community members of a Christian college perceive the importance of their chapel relative to the importance placed on it by an architect’s strong campus design principles.
Calvin College, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, serves as a case study, offering an example of how a college community might regard the importance of a chapel building over and against its architect’s strong design principles. The chapel building was not conceived as a primary expression of the college’s visual identity and thus was only incidentally associated with the architect’s overarching vision for the campus. This case study asks if the community of Calvin College perceives the chapel as a powerful campus placemarker contributing to the current visual identity of the institution. The results of this study illustrate that a chapel building can work as an institutional symbol for a Christian college, representing the institution’s identity even when it stands apart from strong campus design principles.

Abstract: College and university administrators understand that parking is a necessary and valuable resource. By taking a fresh look at their campus parking resources, planners across the country are using parking to achieve a wide array of objectives, including promoting important institutional values like sustainability. They are also using cutting-edge technologies to improve the quality of life on campus and streamline the administration of campus parking facilities. Furthermore, the emerging trend of privatizing or leasing campus parking offers new opportunities for financing important institutional initiatives. These—and other—trends are helping colleges and universities fully realize the potential of their parking resources.

Abstract: Will online education render the traditional university campus irrelevant? Is there a there there when it comes to online education? What makes the flesh-and-blood, brick-and-mortar material realm still relevant—even essential—to education? While online education has brought with it radical transformation, bringing people together in physical space is and will be essential for student success. The reasons for coming together, however, are changing; institutions must adapt if they are to remain vital. Institutions need to know where they stand. What is their “there”? What can they do “there” that cannot be done online?

Abstract: This grounded theory research investigates climate action plan implementation using Cal Poly Pomona as a case study. It analyzes organizational dynamics in climate planning processes, investigates actions that may have been taken without the plan, and identifies the challenges of taking climate action. The results indicate that while most actions could have been taken without the plan, the planning process yielded social, political, and intellectual capital that would otherwise not have been realized. In areas where progress is slow or stalled, there is a lack of effective collaboration, a mismatch between plan strategies and organizational norms, or a perceived or real lack of efficacy.

Abstract: Many on-site generators on college and university campuses may be avoided with no loss in backup power availability when a district energy system is used as the normal source of power. This has obvious benefit in terms of site impact and the reduction in greenhouse gases. In many cases, this backup power will be less expensive and more reliable than a system of building-specific on-site generators. Getting this possibility driven into the engineering culture and financial balance sheets is the hard part.

Abstract: The recently completed Stokes Hall at Boston College creates a new base for the humanities. Designed in the campus’s historic Collegiate Gothic style, this new facility and the future companion buildings anticipated in the Middle Campus master plan will add value to the university by extending the existing architectural tradition to the edges of the Middle Campus. This extension of the Middle Campus architecture and landscape will emphasize and support BC’s planning goals and mission through greater public visibility of its iconic built forms and create memorable experiences and a sense of community for all users.

Abstract: Design Lab 1 (DL1) grew out of an awareness of core principles strongly similar to those of what has now come to be called connected learning, bringing them to life at the University of Michigan in 1999 in an extensively open, and continuously evolving, hybrid teaching, learning, making, presenting, and community space. DL1 shares elements of other learning environments but also differs in a variety of fundamental ways, including that it is an inhabited space with a culture of open user-centered design defined around a process of continuous change, ownership, opportunity, and risk taking in the service of authentic learning. Drawing from a 2012 yearlong descriptive research project, this article presents a snapshot in time-lapse video, respondent quotations, and researcher narration of course-focused activity in DL1 in order to show the complex, interrelated structures observed there that enable users to truly engage and DL1 to come to life.

Abstract: A post-occupancy evaluation instrument was developed and piloted to measure (1) the reliability and validity of the instrument and (2) the effect of evidence-based solutions on student engagement in the classroom. Content analysis synthesized elements of engagement from multiple sciences to form the body of questions. A post/pre methodology compared the “old” row-by-column seating with the “new” classroom designs. A high degree of internal item consistency was reached between all identified factors (α = 0.91, α = 0.93, α = 0.96, α = 0.96), and highly statistically significant differences were found between the “old” and the “new” classroom designs (all p-values < 0.0001). Improvements were found when comparing each of the identified factors, all of which related to active learning and engagement practices in the “old” and “new” classrooms.