By Tom Lowe
Student engagement in higher education is most commonly discussed in relation to learning, emotions and/or behaviours (whether online or in person). This blog series has highlighted the present-day tensions and challenges we see in student engagement, where a prominent feature has been the attendance conundrum in-person providers are predominantly facing. Taking this conversation forward, this blog will now consider the wider physical built environment of the spaces with which we are asking our students to engage. This is not only the classrooms in which we teach, but the buildings that greet us daily, the social spaces within them, and the wider campus landscapes. The built-environment does not only provide sites of learning, it also holds the potential to foster engagement and a wider sense of community and belonging. However, those same spaces can also do the opposite, causing alienation. The build environment can also create barriers to learning through being inaccessible in its physical barriers or through only functioning as teaching rooms and offering no space for students to create community in what is commonly known as “linger space” (a term I will return to later).
Beautiful buildings and architectural awards
UK universities are in an increasingly challenging environment, where market forces place pressure upon student recruitment targets, metrics of research, and student outcomes. In addition to remaining competitive in these metrics, universities must also manage their reputation through marketing, social media and their physical presence in their location area plays a key role in shaping the university’s reputation and attractiveness as a place of study for prospective students. The investment in university estates has been referred to as the beautification, or the ‘disneyification’, of our learning institutions, where universities in the UK supercharged building projects in the 2000s and 2010s. Institutions now boast increased teaching capacity of modern and technologically equipped super-learning centres, which offer awe-inspiring, ‘wow-factor’, spaces to visit at open days and conferences, to attract prospective students and business investment. These spaces often feature on university websites, are prominent at recruitment events, and are often at the cutting edge (or the historic enduring legacy) of architecture, winning awards nationally for beauty, sustainability and/ or design.
Buildings of boxes within boxes, or spaces for community
Capacity-adding buildings will inevitably include multiple classrooms, where more teaching space equals more room for students. Sometimes critiqued for being uninspiring buildings shaped like boxes, with further learning boxes within – where 100 students enter, learn, then leave, before another 100 students enter. These buildings are critical to the operations of the modern university. However, the design of individual classrooms should not just be about capacity, where the temptation is often to use stacked seating to fit in more students for lectures. Instead, these buildings should be designed around engagement through pedagogical innovations which prioritise group work, applied learning and community building through simply enabling students to talk to one another. While fitting in as many students as possible will often be a priority in a massified higher education system, small steps such as rotatable seats in lecture theatres to facilitate peer learning, adaptable spaces that can include moveable tables for group work, and simply, having more smaller rooms over large rooms, can all support student engagement. A recent keynote from Prof Claire Hamshire at the 2023 RAISE Conference highlighted that if a student travels to campus, sits in a lecture in silence, then travels home, that student will not create a social connection. And as commuting students are on the increase, we need to ensure our contact time, and our built environments enable opportunities for social connection.
The space outside the learning box
Outside the classroom and beyond the building, the work continues to support student engagement, where the wider campus can also foster, or hinder, a sense of belonging. In modern teaching buildings, the mistake can often be forgetting to ask the question ‘where do these 100 students go once they leave this room?’ Are our spaces simply acting as turnstiles for learning, where like the London Underground, you get out as quickly as you can to avoid a compact, noisy and intense space. Or, like our favourite cafes, restaurants or bars, does the atmosphere and environment make us wish to linger, to relax and even unwind. Creating ‘linger social space’, or a so-called ‘sticky campus’ is now a priority for many universities post-COVID-19, where ensuring social seating and catered spaces are readily available so students can socialise. At the University of Westminster, my home institution, social space is a clear priority, where ensuring ample seating, affordable refreshments and study spaces are available for students to stay on campus. For student engagement to be support by the built environment, universities must remember to match these mass teaching buildings with appropriate social spaces for students to linger after learning.
Spaces where you want to be
Whether we are discussing the learning, social, or wider campus estate, it’s safe to say that we want to create spaces where people want to be. Indeed, employers beyond education are also increasingly investing in this agenda, to attract employees back to the workplace and to support collaboration. Our built environments should not only be there to attract students at the open day, but should follow through to the learning journey through facilitating engagement and learning in how they are thoughtfully planned and constructed. They should create positive spaces where students want to be, to stay, and to connect. These aspects of buildings are undeniably important in discussions relating to student attendance and perhaps even, dare I say, satisfaction. After all, a particularly uninspiring, poorly ventilated space can certainly effect student engagement and learning. Finally, while thinking ahead to my next blog, if we wish for students to come to campus, in order to access support or develop their employability and soft-skills at university, it is a strategic priority that our spaces inspire and encourage their attendance. More on this in my next blog which will talk about the importance of embedding employability into the curriculum.
Tom Lowe has researched and innovated in student engagement across diverse settings for over ten years, in areas such as student voice, retention, employability and student-staff partnership. Tom works at the University of Westminster as Assistant Head of School (Student Experience) in Finance and Accounting where he leads on student experience, outcomes and belonging. Tom is also the Chair of RAISE, a network for all stakeholders in higher education for researching, innovating and sharing best practice in student engagement. Prior to Westminster, Tom was a Senior Lecturer in Higher Education at the University of Portsmouth, and previously held leadership positions for engagement and employability at the University of Winchester. Tom has published two books on student engagement with Routledge; ‘A Handbook for Student Engagement in Higher Education: Theory into Practice’ in 2020 and ‘Advancing Student Engagement in Higher Education: Reflection, Critique and Challenge’ in 2023, and has supported over 40 institutions in consultancy and advisory roles internationally
Readings
Bilham, T., Hamshire, C., Hartog, M. and Doolan, M.A., 2019. Reframing Space for Learning: Excellence and Innovation in University Teaching. UCL IOE Press. UCL Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL.
Spire, Z., 2023. University estates and postdigital higher education: Space, place, and being a university. Postdigital Science and Education, 5(3), pp.716-729.
