Category Archives: Campus

Online Shift – Everywhere and Nowhere

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Everywhere and NowhereAnother academic year begins and higher education continues its shift to online and digital placelessness.  How much of a shift?  Big and growing – in 2016 the undergraduate shift was as big as 16 Ohio State Universities.

That’s about 750,000 full-time undergraduate students.  These students and their teachers were everywhere and nowhere. They were enrolled at the country’s public and private not-for-profit 4-year colleges and universities.  This is not counting graduate students or those enrolled in for-profits.

Online credit hours – Bricks and mortar

Considered in credit hours: 750,000 undergraduate students “consume” as many credit hours as produced by the combined total of 4 large state university systems:  University of Wisconsin, University of North Carolina, State University of New York and California State Colleges and Universities.  Translated into bricks and mortar, its about 45 million square feet of classrooms, offices and student life and study space.

The physical results of online education are:  1) underused buildings – existing space that is no longer needed; or 2) spaces that need not be built as online enrollments grow, even if on-campus enrollment remains steady.  The construction cost of this much building space is about $14 billion, and keeping the lights on would cost more than $1 billion every year.

Why does this matter?

Campuses – the physical footprints – are in a state of flux.  Once they could be designed for rigidly scheduled place-based classes.  Now they need to support an episodic experience that is only occasionally place-specific.  Twenty-first century students and faculty are everywhere and nowhere.

These physical changes are seen through a thicket of business and political contexts that are changing as significantly as technology.  Just as no specific storm can be attributed to climate change, no campus closure can be attributed to digital transformation. The influence of the shifting context can be seen in changes in the public funding, market, demographics and technology of higher education.  The effects ripple out through the existing system of place-based institutions creating both favorable and unfavorable local conditions.

Campuses are in a transformation as significant as the response to the influx of baby boomers.  About 50 years ago building more was the only right answer to burgeoning enrollments.  Now as campuses become less central to the lives of students and their faculty, building more won’t solve many problems and may well create unsustainable results.

The digital transformation of pedagogy, libraries and student experience requires different physical spaces differently arrayed.  The shift to online credit hours changes the relationships among students and faculty and collective expectations for physical space. This transformation requires understanding the campus as a setting for episodic experience rather than activities in lock-step time blocks.  This transformation requires replacing obsolete buildings and modifying the rest for the hyper-connected flow of information, students and faculty.   Adding net new square footage should be a last resort.

Campuses in Transition – 10 years on

When I began writing about the physical effects of digital transformation about 10 years ago, it was more of a question.  If classes are moving online, doesn’t that change the campus?  There were no hard data, just divergent opinions about the future.   The first real evidence emerged in changing pedagogies and redesigned libraries as brave/visionary academics began to realize the potential of early digital products.

At the same time start-ups and other non-traditional providers were developing new forms of instruction and credentials.  Disruption became a buzzword in higher education thought and MOOC’s were in their infancy.  Arizona State and Southern New Hampshire and many others took their own paths to blending campus and online offerings.  All of this expanded the market for higher education, while limiting the market for more traditional providers.

The emerging picture is becoming clear: both/and rather than either/or.  Institutions are becoming both physical and digital. Traditional campuses continue to be key elements in the mix.  Their physicality authenticates and provides visual validation of the degree offered. Campuses are being modified to make them places where it is worth being physically present.  At the same time, traditional campuses are becoming increasingly optional as digital formats mature.  Two simultaneous strands, one physical and one digital, speak to the both/and nature of the emerging campus.

Interwoven strands:  Physical and Digital

The coexistent strands of physical change and digital innovation are being woven together in higher education to create new learning environments.  The Learning Spaces Collaboratory with the visionary leadership of Jeanne Narum continues decades of advocacy and organizing to improve on-campus learning spaces.  The movement’s efforts initially focused on traditional STEM disciplines and student-centered undergraduate research.  More recently the focus has broadened to include spaces designed to support active learning methods, still student-centered involving application of learning rather than traditional lectures.

The transformation of learning environments is grounded in the work of pedagogical pioneers including Bob Biechner and his Scale-Up models.  Learning environments designed for these pedagogies improve student outcomes and support group projects, rather than lectures.  These types of spaces also serve flipped course formats with active face-to-face interaction rather than passive information regurgitation.

These non-traditional classrooms are made possible by combining the student’s use of asynchronous lectures with the physical attributes of bigger, flatter, faster classrooms.  Learning spaces are bigger to provide more workspace per student than a tablet arm chair in a tiered lecture hall.  Flat floors allow easy rearrangement of furniture to meet the needs of each class.

These spaces also have high-speed digital access, to accommodate accelerating rates of connectivity that increases the value of the in-room experience with remote participants, demonstrations and events.  We should think of the 21s century learning space as a black box theater in which we are all actors.  It is not a high-tech version of a room where once upon a time there were lectures.

Academic librarians turned to digital formats earlier than other faculty members.  They now spend well less than 10 percent of their acquisition budgets on paper.  Late in the 20th century the quality of a library was often measured by its paper holdings.  Now librarians measure their libraries by the quality of student serviced academic support, even as their physical print holdings are shrinking.  Libraries are becoming Goog-Azon-Bucks as they emulate 1) the search functions of Google, 2) the rapid availability of Amazon and 3) the physical service ambience of Starbucks.

While classrooms and libraries are morphing, digital innovations are continuing to challenge assumptions about teaching and learning.  The quality and effectiveness of online and blended pedagogies continues to improve semester by semester.  Advancements in artificial intelligence and outcomes-based learning science are evolving rapidly.

Georgia Tech’s experiment with an online teaching assistant in the form of a digital avatar named “Jill Watson” advanced the practicality and effectiveness of digital learning assistance.  “Jill’s” ability to improve student outcomes continues to ramp up through artificial intelligence.  Even in her first post beta-tested version students, randomly assigned to “Jill” or a human assistant, found “Jill” to be better able to help.  This is only one example of the growing influence of digital modalities to both improve student outcomes and reduce the need for conventional arrangements of space and time.

Changing the Physical Trajectory

Designing campuses for a digital world requires changing the trajectory.  In 2014 my recommendations for campus planners were:

  • Build no net additional square feet
  • Upgrade the best; get rid of the rest
  • Manage space and time; rethink capacity
  • Right-size the whole
  • Take sustainable action
  • Make campus matter

I stand by all of these with one geographical qualification.  Some campuses, generally in the south and west, are seeing growth of on-campus enrollment.  For them building more may be appropriate.  At the same time all campuses need to rethink capacity as the physical expectations of campuses morph.  Right-size the whole, rather than build in lockstep with pre-digital assumptions of “if we build it they will come.” This involves managing space and time differently as students and faculty become more transient moving at the speed of digital rather than the speed of paper.

Another academic year begins and higher education continues its shift to online and digital placelessness.  The interwoven strands of physical campuses and digital innovations are leading to an emerging model of both/and rather than either/or.  The physical changes are becoming measurable as the paradigm of “seat time” ebbs.  Traditional physical planning practices need to adapt to support students and faculty, who are everywhere and nowhere.

Methodology

The rest of this post lays out the details and methodology of my estimate of the physical consequences of digital transformation.

It’s self-evident these 2.7 million individual students (750,000 full-time equivalents) earning online credit were not occupying classrooms in any conventional sense.  This is a straightforward reduction in the need for seats and classrooms. Estimating the ripple effect for other types of campus spaces requires a number of judgment calls.

Does an online student need study space on campus? Does an online teacher, often an adjunct, need a campus office? Does the need for administrative and support spaces and offices grow or shrink? How about the student union and recreation centers?

Here are the analytical choices I have made.

  • Students taking only some of their classes online may be living on-campus or near-campus. It is common for resident students to take at least one online course during their time on campus.  As a result my estimates of student life and study space impacts are limited to students taking exclusively online courses.
  • As for faculty offices, online courses are most often taught by adjuncts without conventional office space.  My estimate provides one-half of the typical faculty office space.
  • The estimate assumes no reduction in administrative and support spaces. Online students still require these services and related spaces.

This approach estimates the existing building area that could be reallocated, or remain “unbuilt” because it is not needed as students shift to online programs. For every 10,000 FTE students moving online it is more than 500,000 square feet of building.

Data Sources

How have I made this estimate?  My starting points are all public sources such as the NCES database for distance enrollment and publications of the Society of College and University Planning.   A link to my spreadsheet is here in pdf form.

None of the data sources were intended to be used in this manner.  The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data is for “distance learning” (in this context synonymous with online).  This is the most accurate estimate of the number of students in online courses.  The most current data come from Fall 2016.  The data published in Kings of Infinite Space by the Society of College and University Planning (SCUP) concern the ratio of campus facilities in Assignable Square Feet (ASF) to Full Time Equivalent (FTE) student.  The report was published in 2005, thus its values predate any significant online impacts.  I consider them to be an appropriate benchmark for the pre-digital campus.

Request for comment

I would appreciate comments on the methodology and my observations. The increasing use of digital learning formats in post secondary education will continue to influence campus development.  Informing those responsible for the stewardship and creation of campuses needs to be a team effort.

Online Education Impacts Campuses – 2017

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Equivalent of 500,000 undergrads are only online

Is traditional undergraduate campus building space being made less necessary by online education? Yes.

The growth of online education is depressing the need for the brick and mortar of campuses just like online sales are reducing the need for retail space. In fall 2015 the scale of the undergraduate impact was      12 Arizona States or          52 Harvards.

 

So far more than 23 million square feet of traditional campus space has been obviated by online education. This space is existing and unbuilt.

  • Existing – excess space that is no longer needed; and
  • Unbuilt – space that need not be built.

Continue reading →

Classrooms and ORs

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student-centeredOperating rooms are to hospitals as classrooms are to colleges and universities – mission critical.

They are tiny parts of an institution’s footprint yet essential to the mission. Hospital administrators pay attention to ORs. Provosts rarely give classrooms a second thought. In the digital transformation of higher education effective learning environments are becoming more critical, not less. Inattention to classrooms and learning spaces can be an Achilles heel.

Patient-Centered Operating rooms are part of a much larger patient-centered environment that includes beds and outpatient clinics. A hospital without an operating room is not much of a hospital. Though ORs and surgical support areas make up less than 7% of a hospital’s usable floor area, these small components and the procedures they support are the essence of the hospital. They are among the most carefully built spaces, with extraordinary care taken for every aspect of the physical environment, from air quality to floor vibration.

Not Student-Centered Universities are not student-centered in the way that hospitals are patient-centered. ORs are not located for the convenience of surgeons, however classrooms are located for the convenience of faculty. ORs are part of an integrated patient care environment. Classrooms are balkanized by department, school, and university with different rules pertaining to each.

Classrooms and teaching laboratories are a small part of a university footprint, often less than 7%. These spaces and the experience they support are as essential to the university as ORs are to the hospital. ORs are never an afterthought, classrooms often are. ORs are understood to be strategic assets, classrooms are rarely considered at all, except to be sure that there are enough chairs to satisfy the “butts-in-seats” pro forma.

Examples While ORs have changed dramatically in the last century, classrooms are just beginning to get the care they deserve. A wide spectrum of active learning spaces have resulted from this attention. FLEXspace and the Learning Spaces Collaboratory have growing inventories of examples.

Active learning spaces have more floor area per student than traditional classrooms, and the floors are flat. The combination of floor area and flatness serves the needs of evolving pedagogies. Flexibility for movement and engagement allows reconfiguration for discussion and project work – and writing surfaces are everywhere. At the high-tech end of the spectrum, the rooms have the fastest possible network speed. At the low-tech end, these rooms resemble traditional seminar rooms without a massive central table.

Investing in Obsolescence The rate of improving classrooms is slow, requiring a couple of decades on most campuses. Digital transformation of higher education is accelerating, making time in traditional classrooms evermore important. Still, it is possible to find universities reinvesting scarce capital funding in obsolete teaching spaces. I won’t name the institutions, but it is happening all across the nation. The explanation usually has several sources:

  • senior faculty members who do not wish to change teaching methods
  • lag times of more than a decade between documented need and occupancy
  • ineffectual influence from knowledgeable facilities staff, and
  • indifferent institutional leadership.

All of these factors contribute to the slow change in classrooms, but none more than indifferent institutional leadership. If presidents and provosts saw the classrooms as key to a student centered environment – as a mission critical asset – they would act differently and more urgently. That is what hospital administrators do when they see problems with their ORs.

It takes decades to make significant physical change to a campus-wide array of classrooms – creating more effective and supportive learning environments. Even though poor learning environments are not life threatening, starting the process is urgent. In an increasingly competitive and digital world, physical transformation of learning environments is critical to the education mission.

Neuroscience and Campus – Memory and Place

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tower-stair-2Memory has been tethered to place by human evolution. Campuses have been among these places for more than a thousand years.

The Question  As students and teachers swim further into the digital stream of online education and simulated reality, will place continue to matter?

This question has taken me far beyond the disciplines of brick and mortar. Higher education, sociology, cultural anthropology, student life, academic business, learning analytics, neuroscience and artificial intelligence have all been on my reading list.

My research is not complete, but my tentative conclusion:

For centuries, campus has been part of the standard paradigm. It has always been there – a setting, not a participant. The future of the campus in the learning enterprise depends on being re-designed to be an agent, a necessary supportive ingredient, not just being there.

Continue reading →

University Architect – Builder / Steward / Shaper

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The roles and responsibilities of a university architect ebb and flow with changes in administration and each particular project. When fast and cheap are valued, the role is to build short-term solutions. If investment in the future is intended a balance of stewardship and creativity is required.

Fluid Environments – Expectations vary for each campus and project. They swing through a wide range, project to project and campus to campus. This dynamic can make a university architect feel the need to be a like a chameleon, shifting from one context to another. In one setting the responsibilities are direct implementation according to established rules. In another, extensive consultation and consideration of long-term consequences are expected. Continue reading →

Jeanne Narum – Academic Change Agent

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Jeanne NarumJeanne Narum has changed conversations about pedagogy and place, teaching and architecture. Beginning with Project Kaleidoscope and now Learning Spaces Collaboratory she has fostered transformative and ongoing conversations improving pedagogy and the educational function of labs and classrooms. This goes far beyond the glitzy marketing photos and glib sales brochures. Her work has engaged a generation of academic leaders, teachers and architects in design thinking that makes campus matter.

Learning Spaces Collaboratory Webinars – Her current series of webinars is worth a serious look. They are organized for campus stakeholders around lessons learned throughout the country:

  • Investing in active learning classrooms
  • Developing a “space matters” culture
  • Dissolving boundaries between communities
  • Transforming through renovation and connections

The webinars build on a series of 2016 Roundtables on the Future of Planning Learning Spaces.

Year in, year out, Jeanne has focused on the needs of students and their teachers, all the while pushing planning and design professionals out of their comfort zones. This has been hard work, overcoming institutional inertia, promoting a design-thinking approach to pedagogy and challenging institutional and architectural paradigms. The results have been a generation of creativity in learning environments and encouragement for the kind of active learning that benefits both faculty and students. Without these efforts, the learning environments on the country’s campuses would be poorer – less supportive and less effective.

Check out the series of webinars. They are worth your most precious resource, time.

Here is a video from a recent informal conversation with Jeanne. She talks about the importance of cultural, pedagogical and spatial change, the support of the National Science Foundation and the histories of collaboration at the heart of Project Kaleidoscope and the Learning Spaces Collaboratory. In this informal conversation you can see why she has been such a successful agent of academic change.

Why Campus Matters: Knowledge, Innovation, Efficacy and Synchronicity

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Why Campus MattersThe enduring value of a campus lies in the creation of new knowledge, effective education, fostering creativity and sharing place and time.

This argument was presented at a recent conference. Here is the link to an edited version, in four voices: Thomas Gieryn, Thomas Fisher, Amir Hajrasouliha, and Michael Haggans. The Society of College and University Planning conference was held at Arizona State University. Gieryn, Fisher and Hajrasouliha participated via WebEx while Haggans was on campus.

Gieryn – Knowledge Creation – Thomas Gieryn is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and former Vice Provost at Indiana University. His research centers on the cultural authority of science and on the significance of place for human behavior and social change. His prize-winning book Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line was published by the University of Chicago Press. He is currently completing a book on “truth-spots,” places that lend legitimacy to beliefs and claims.

Fisher – Innovation – Thomas Fisher is Professor in the School of Architecture and Director of the Metropolitan Design Center at the University of Minnesota. He has written extensively about architectural design, practice, and ethics. His current research involves looking at the implications of the “Third Industrial Revolution” on architecture and cities in the 21st century. His newest book is, Some Possible Futures, Design Thinking our Way to a More Resilient World.

Hajrasouliha – Efficacy – Amir Hajrasouliha is Assistant Professor in City and Regional Planning at Cal Poly – San Luis Obispo. An architect and urban planner, Amir earned his Masters from the University of Michigan and doctorate from the University of Utah. His dissertation, The Morphology of the Well Designed Campus is the first research to quantify the relationship between the physical characteristics of a campus and student success. He is winner of the 2016 SCUP Perry Chapman Prize.

Haggans – Synchronicity – Michael Haggans is a Visiting Scholar in the School of Architecture at the University of Minnesota and Visiting Professor in the Center for 21st Century Universities at Georgia Tech. His research concerns the facilities implications of the digital transformation of higher education. He is writing a book on the value of campus in a digital world.

Online Impact on Campus

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ImpactIs it possible that online courses will have no impact on the future of the campus?

Let’s look at the data. More than 25% of college students are taking at least one course online. Paring that down to traditional 4-year undergraduates, the equivalent of more than 400,000 full-time students are not in the classroom. This is the equivalent of 8 Arizona State Universities or 40 Harvards. Continue reading →

Classrooms and the 21st Century Campus

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Haggans in PDU 130226Classrooms for active learning are strategic assets for the 21st century campus.

Even in the digital transformation of higher education there are three-dimensional classrooms – but not the usual types. Active learning spaces will be a competitive advantage since they support better educational outcomes than traditional methods. Realizing this potential will require a disruptive campus-wide approach to the design and management of classrooms.

In the emerging campus, lecture halls are used less and less used. At the same time there is increasing demand for active learning spaces – those places that allow students to interact with each other and their teachers. Continue reading →

University of Uber / Airbnb

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GT.chaos.1.baseWhat are the Uber or Airbnb equivalents of the university? These are the questions Tom Fisher thinks campus planners should be asking.

We are at the trailing edge of six decades of campus facilities expansion. The resulting mix of assets can be a rich foundation on which to rebuild and right-size sustainable institutions, or part of an unsustainable burden that helps to sink the rest.

In a recent interview, Fisher argued for rethinking many of the assumptions of the physical campus.

The campuses we have inherited are way too big. I know that seems odd, because when you are on a campus everyone is crying for more space, but we have a lot of highly specialized space that goes under-utilized…the faculty office being one of the more notable ones. Increasingly faculty are carrying their office in their laptop and cell phone. So this idea of having a room set aside for yourself is really antiquated. Classrooms are changing. They will still be used, but the whole campus is a teaching environment. The whole city and region is a learning environment.

The Challenge for SCUP and Campus Planners

Continue reading →