Annual Survey of Teaching Room Utilisation

CPARG.17/10-11

UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK

For the meeting of the Capital Planning and Accommodation Review Group to be held on Thursday 3 February 2011

Annual Survey of Teaching Room Utilisation

1. Executive Summary

The overall Utilisation of University teaching space has increased by 1% to 28%. The trend for CTTRs to display better results than LTTRs across the survey is replicated again this year however significant improvement in the Frequency of use of LTTRs this year has reduced the gap in performance with CTTRs to just 4%, compared with an 18% difference last year (in terms of Frequency). This improvement in LTTR results is likely a result of (i) the CPARG 2009/10 resolution that a number of poorly used LTTRs be converted to CTTRs for 10/11, and (ii) an overall reduction in the number of LTTRs surveyed. Despite improvement in results LTTRs remain in the HEFCE ‘poor’ category for space use, whilst CTTRs are towards the top of the ‘fair’ category.

53% of locally timetabled rooms were shown to be poorly used (less than 25% Utilisation over the week), 63 of these rooms being in the same category last year. The movement of number of rooms from LTTR to CTTR has demonstrated a positive impact on Usage figures of the rooms, and comparison year-on-year clearly demonstrates the impact of central management of space in utilisation and is support for further centralisation of space. Similarly the creation of ‘hybrid’ teaching rooms (managed on specific days by a department or by the central timetabling team) has shown significant improvement in the use of the rooms when under both local and central control.

The results show a clear preference for teaching between 10am and 1pm, with other hours of the teaching day being underused. For the 9am-10am teaching slot the highest Utilisation figure across the week was 16%. A similar pattern is shown for the 4-5pm slot. In terms of Frequency of use, results showed that on any given day there was a maximum of 46% of teaching space utilised between 9am-10am.

Large capacity lecture theatres were once again shown to be significantly well used, with rooms over capacity 300 having a Frequency of 89% for the survey week.

1. Introduction

The University is required to submit the results of its Teaching Room Utilisation Survey as part of the annual Estates Management Statisticsreturn. The Survey covers all centrally managed teaching rooms (CTTR) and all locally managed teaching rooms (LTTR), other than science department teaching labs. The 2010 survey covered a total of 277rooms (122 CTTR and 155 LTTR,see figure A in the Appendix for a more detailed summary), over the 3 University campuses, and took place during week 4 of the Autumn term (25th-29th October, one week later than the 09-10 survey).

The results of the survey provide an indication as to how well the University is using its space, and identifies areas for improvement.However, the results reflect a single week of the academic year; as the need to more carefully manage space increases there may be the need to consider the potential to increase the number of surveys of space usage undertaken throughout the year, noting however that increase in this activity will have a resource impact.

A note on methodology:

Frequency of use is determined by the number of hours a room is used out of a maximum of 40 hours (9am-5pm, Monday to Friday). Occupancy is the average number of people in the room over the week, divided by the capacity of the room. For rooms of capacity 50 or less, occupants were head-counted. For rooms of capacity 51+, percentage occupancy (to the nearest 5%) was recorded. The recording of occupancy data reflects a move towards greater granularity in the Teaching Survey results; in 2009 only rooms of capacity 20 or less were head-counted, with all other rooms reported to the nearest 25%.Room Utilisation is the product of Frequency and Occupancy.

1. Key points of Note

(a)Overall Results

The overall Utilisation of teaching space surveyed this year has shown a 1% increaseto 28%, as compared against 2009-10 figures (306 teaching rooms surveyed in week 3, 2009[1]). The University has demonstrated a 10% increase in Frequency of room use to 56%. This result demonstrates a clear commitment to improve the use of teaching space both at a central and local level. Indeed, locally managed rooms have shown a 17% year-on-year increase in Frequency (to 56%), and are now much closer to the CTTR Frequency figure than previous years. Disappointing, however, was the fall in Occupancy for teaching space. Occupancy for the 2010 survey was 50%, compared to 59% in 2009 and 69% in 2008. Both local and central spaces have demonstrated a fall in this area; LTTRs displayed a large fall of 11% (to 42%) whilst CTTR occupancy fell 8%to 56%. There are four possible explanations for this fall: (i) the capacity range of teaching rooms available does not appropriately match the teaching needs of the institution, (ii) the timing of the survey (week 4 , Autumn term) did not reflect the optimal week, in terms of class occupancy, to undertake the survey, (iii) the increased granularity of recording Occupancy has led to more accurate results and has therefore more clearly identified a trend that has previously been disguised by historical methodologies, and/or (iv) departments overestimate the capacity of rooms required to accommodate their student numbers during the timetable build. It is likely that options (iii) and (iv) are the most significant contributors.

Chart 1: 2009-10 results split by CTTR and LTTR (showing 2009-10 results in italicised brackets)

The trend for CTTRs to display better results than LTTRs across the survey is replicated again this year (see above chart). The significant improvement in the Frequency of use of LTTRs this year however has reduced the gap in performance with CTTRs to just 4%, compared with an 18% disparity last year (in terms of Frequency). Following last year’s survey results, the CPARG resolved that a number of poorly used LTTRs be converted to CTTRs for 10/11. It is therefore expected that we should see this improved utilisation of LTTRs as a result.

The gap in Occupancy figures for CTTRs and LTTRs has widened year-on-year from 11% in 2009 to 14% in 2010. The implication here is that locally managed rooms are less well matched to class size than centrally managed equivalents.

Overall Utilisation figures for CTTRs fell slightly to 34%, whilst LTTRs Utilisation increased to 24%. In HEFCE document 00/04 ‘Estates Strategies: A Guide to Good Practice’, the following utilisation rates are defined:

Poor: <25%

Fair: 25-35%

Good: 35% upwards

The overall Utilisation of 28% places Warwick at the lower end of the ‘fair’ category. CTTRs are towards the top of the ‘fair’ category, whilst LTTRs are in the ‘poor’ category.

Overall the year-on-year picture is quite steady. Chart 2 below shows that a slight fall in the number of rooms up-to and including the 11-20% Usage category, coupled with a slight increase in the number up-to and including 51-60% Usage has caused the 1% improvement in overall University Usage of teaching rooms, as noted above.

Chart 2: Cumulative histogram showing proportion of teaching rooms surveyed against Usage figures

(b)Results by Campus

Main campus was the best used campus, with a Utilisation of 34%. Gibbet Hill and Westwood have significantly lower figures, and fall well within the ‘poor’ category as per the HEFCE definitions above (19% and 17% Utilisation respectively).

Westwood was once again the most poorly used campus for teaching space, despite increasing in its Frequency, Occupancy and Utilisation results since 2009 (see chart 3below). Improvement in the Utilisation of teaching spaces at Westwood between 09/11 and 10/11 is not unexpected: as a result of the 2009 Teaching Survey the CPARG approved the decommissioning of the Westwood Science Education building from 10/11, as such 6 CTTRs were lost from the Westwood site (c. 20% of the total CTTR provision at Westwood) and were not replaced. Note also that the number of teaching rooms surveyed in the Engineering Management building on the Westwood site(used by Warwick Manufacturing Group for professional courses) has also reduced this year (see footnote 1); these rooms were particularly poorly utilised as teaching rooms last year and therefore could help to explain the improvement in Frequency for the Westwood campus.Furthermore, the Refurbishment Group for Centrally Timetabled Rooms invested a proportion of CIF funds into the improvement of AV facilities at the Westwood site, which is likely also to have increased the usability of the rooms for departments.

Gibbet Hill has shown the most significant fall year-on-year in terms of Occupancy figures, and because of this is the only campus to display a fall in overall Usage (from 25% to 19%).

Chart3: Frequency, Occupancy and Usage figures for the three University campuses

The results for Gibbet Hill suggest that the 2008 Usage figure of 49% was an anomaly. As with the Westwood campus, the utilisation of teaching space is restrained by the teaching needs/student numbers of the departments located on the sites; the Central Timetabling team is unable to convince many main campus-based departments to use available space on the Westwood or Gibbet Hill sites.

1. Usage figures analysis

12% of rooms surveyed this year had a Usage figure of over 50%, with 56% of this cohort being CTTRs. The chart below is a histogram of the Usage figures of CTTRs and LTTRs. Appendix Figures B and C list the best and poorest performing rooms for this year.

Chart 4: Histogram of LTTR and CTTR usage figures

Poorly Used Rooms

Analysis of the number of rooms performing poorly (25% or less usage), shows 28% of CTTRs were poorly used, compared to 53% of LTTRs.

22 of the 34 poorly used CTTRs this year were also under utilised in 2009 (see Appendix Figure G). All but 3 of these rooms are on the Westwood campus making the majority of CTTR provision on the site regularly poorly used. As noted above, the campus is poorly used overall (LTTR and CTTR spaces), and is primarily due to the perception of ‘isolation’ by departments not based at Westwood, and therefore a reluctance to be timetabled into available spaces on the site, alongside Education’s variable pattern of room use across the term. Analysis of the bookings in Westwood CTTR and LTTR teaching rooms across the Autumn term 2010 shows that for the majority of weeks rooms are booked for less than 50% of the available hours (based on bookings 9am-7pm Monday to Friday). In weeks 7-9 the majority of bookings take up less than 30% of the available periods. What is interesting however, is that for the first two weeks of the term, a significant proportion of both CTTRs and LTTRs are booked for over 60% of the available slots. This reflects the nature of the teaching pattern used by the Institute of Education, whereby on-campus teaching is front loaded in a term, with students then out on placement for the remainder of the term (Appendix Figure E shows the bookings over term 1). The data suggest that the provision of teaching space at Westwood could be streamlined, however careful thought would need to be given to the potential ways to address this, given the teaching pattern of the Institute of Education. It also needs to be noted that for a few weeks towards the end of the summer vacation teaching space at the Westwood site is in high demand in order to address the needs of the Institute of Education, Centre for Applied Linguistics and Teach First pre-sessional courses – all of which are currently located at Westwood.

Over half of the LTTRs surveyed had a Utilisation of less than 25% and can therefore be deemed to be poorly used (see Appendix Figure C for a list and Figure D for totals per department). Note that whilst Warwick Business School has the most number of poorly used rooms, these figures do not take into account the syndicate style teaching of the School (see section 9 for alternative analysis), therefore it is expected that this department would have a high number of poorly used rooms.Warwick Medical School and Warwick Manufacturing Group have the next highest number of poorly used local rooms, both showing seven rooms with Utilisation of less than 25% for the survey week (44% and 50% of their total allocation respectively). Of particular note are Physics and Life Sciences; both departments have multiple teaching rooms within their space allocation, and both show 100% of these rooms as being poorly used across the survey week. 63 of LTTRs were also shown to be poorly used in 2009 (see Appendix Figure F for a list of rooms).

Well Used Rooms

The movement of a number of rooms from LTTR to CTTR (as a result of the 2009 survey)has demonstrated a positive impact on the Usage figures of the rooms (see Appendix Figure H)[2].For example, H2.46 (previously a History local room) moved from 0% Utilisation in 2009 to 28% this year, whilst H4.01 (previously an English local room) showed a 13% increase in Frequency of use and a 6% increase in Utilisation year-on-year.This comparison of performance year-on-year clearly demonstrates the impact of central management of space on utilisation, and is support for further increasing central control of teaching space.

A further 3 LTTRs were converted to ‘hybrid’ LTTR/CTTR rooms for 10/11, as a means to address poor usage. These rooms are managed part of the week by the home department and part of the week by the central timetabling team.This process has worked well for the central timetabling team. It has also resulted in significant increases in Usage figures (across the week) fortwo rooms:

R3.25 (Sociology room): increased from 10% in 2009 to 38% in 2010

H4.03 (Italian room): increased from 19% in 2009 to 42% in 2010

Charts 5 and 6: Year-on-year results for two rooms managed as CTTR/LTTR ‘hybrid’ rooms in 2010/11

This hybrid solution enabled departments to maintain some flexibility throughout the week to be able to accommodate short-notice bookings in a local room, whilst also enabled the central timetabling team to add additional available hours to the timetable (during the timetable build) to address teaching needs for other departments across the University. Charts 5 and 6 above show the overall improvement in results for the hybrid rooms over the week, those below (charts 7 and 8) show the results based on the specific times of the week the rooms were centrally or locally managed. The charts show that by condensing local use of the rooms into two days for R3.25 (Wed and Thurs) and three days for H4.03 (Tues, Wed and Thurs), significant improvement is seen in the local use of the rooms (the Freq/Occ/Usage figures from 2009 are shown horizontal bars on the chart):

Charts 7 and 8: 2010 results for two hybrid rooms split by CTTR and LTTR management, compared against 2009 results

A WMG room (the IMC auditorium) is also managed in a hybrid manner, however only 5 hours across the survey week are centrally managed (4-5pm Mon-Fri). During these slots the room had a 25% Usage, whilst its average Usage across the full survey week was only 8%. These results suggest that movement towards increased central management of teaching space leads to improved utilisation.

Recommendation 1: That the CPARG challenge departments with individual local rooms with a usage of less than 25%, with a view to either (i) converting the rooms to central management or creating hybrid rooms, or (ii) re-allocating for alternative use.

1. Time and Day analysis

The results repeat the pattern demonstrated year-on-year: that Tuesdays and Thursdays are the preferred teaching days across CTTRs and LTTRs, with Friday being the least well used day for teaching. This pattern is mostly replicated throughout the Faculties, to differing extents (see Appendix Figure I). Bookings in CTTRs by academic departments also mirrors this pattern (see Appendix Figure J).

A similarly interesting pattern is established when looking at Utilisationby time of day. The pattern is similar across each day of the week, whereby Usage figures are highest between 10am and 1pm, with usage then tailing off toward the end of the day.

For the 9-10am timeslot for example, the highest Utilisation figure seen across the week is 16% on Thursday (the lowest for this time slot being 9% on Friday). The lowest figure seen in the week was 7% between 4-5pm on Friday.These results suggest that a significantly high proportion of teaching spaces are not being appropriately utilised during the 9-10am and afternoon teaching slots. In terms of Frequency of use (i.e. the true number of rooms used during a given timeslot), the figures show that a maximum of 46% of teaching rooms are used on any given day in the 9am-10am slot only (leaving c. 149 rooms unused).

In terms of Frequency, the most popular teaching slot across the week appears to be 11-12noon, followed by 10-11am and 2-3pm. The least popular are 9-10am and 4-5pm. The Warwick teaching day strictly extends to 7pm, however the patterns displayed by the data to 5pm suggest that the 5-7pm slot will be significantly under-utilised also (see chart 9).

Chart 9: Room Frequency of Use (CTTR and LTTR), by Time Slot

1. Capacity

Table 2 shows that there have been increases in Utilisation for rooms over capacity 300 this year, as well as rooms of capacity 100-149 and 11-34 (noting that the majority of these capacity ranges have not been affected by the change in methodology this year). There has been a fall in Occupancy for all capacity ranges above 35, whilst rooms in categories of less than capacity 35 have seen increases in Occupancy.