Teaching Room Utilisation Survey

CPARG.13/11-12

UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK

For the meeting of the Capital Planning and Accommodation Review Group to be held on Friday 13th January 2012

Annual Teaching Room Utilisation Survey 2011

1. Executive Summary

The overall Utilisation of the University teaching space has increased by a noteworthy 4% to 32%. The trend for CTTRs to display better results than LTTRs across the survey is replicated again this year. Significantly these improvements in utilisation move CTTRs into the HEFCE ‘good’ category with a utilisation of 40% (+7%). Indeed despite the overall usage of LTTRs increasing, the gap in performance between CTTRs and LTTRS widened to 16% from 11% in 2010, and despite improvements in performance LTTRs remain in the ‘poor’ category.

Comparing campuses shows an improvement in the Usage figure for Gibbet Hill, from 19% to 27%, mainly as a result of high undergraduate numbers in the School of Life Sciences, which has resulted in it moving from the ‘poor’ to ‘fair’ category. Frequency figures for both the Gibbet Hill and Westwood Campus have increased (showing a rise of 3% and 6% respectively) but still remain far behind Central Campus. In particular the Westwood Campus utilisation rate of 20%remains a concern. Central Campus shows an increase in utilisation to 35%, just putting it into the HEFCE ‘good’ category.

As was the case last year, the results show a clear preference for teaching between 10am and 1pm, with other hours of the teaching day being underused. The least well used teaching slot continues to be 9am-10am with usage falling again for the late afternoon.

Large capacity lecture theatres were once again shown to be significantly well used, with rooms over capacity 300 having a Frequency of 93% for the survey week, compared to 89% last year. This further underlines the already acknowledged need for more large lecture theatre space, and the CPARG will be aware that a new c.500 seat lecture theatre is currently in the planning stages. The strong increases in Frequency for rooms of capacity 50-69 and 70-99 (both increased by 11% this year to 68%) indicates an increase in demand for rooms of this size that will need to be monitored.

It should be noted that, when compiling the results from this year’s survey, some minor errors were uncovered in the report of last year’s results that was considered by CPARG in February 2011. The correct figures for last year’s survey are used in this report, although the errors in last year’s figures do not have a material effect on the conclusions that can be drawn from the figures.

1. Introduction

The University is required to submit the results of its Teaching Room Utilisation Survey as part of the annual Estates Management Statistics return. The Survey covers all centrally managed teaching rooms (CTTR) and all locally managed teaching rooms (LTTR), other than science department teaching labs. The 2011 survey covered a total of 277rooms (127 CTTRs, 144 LTTRs and 6 Hybrid Rooms), over the 3 University campuses, and took place during week 3 of the Autumn term (17th-21st October 2011), one week earlier than the 2010 survey. More details on the locations of the rooms surveyed can be found in Appendix 1, noting that 10 LTTRs were excluded from the survey due to ongoing refurbishment, which are detailed in Appendix 2.

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)[1]. Occupancy is the average number of people in the room over the week, divided by the capacity of the room. Room Usage is the product of Frequency and Occupancy. 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 results of the survey provide an indication as to how well the University is using its space, and identifies areas for improvement. However these results reflect a single week of the academic year; as the need to more carefully manage space continues, consideration should be given to 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.

Recommendation 1: that the CPARG considers the value of supporting additional survey activity with a view to increasing the quality and reliability of data used to support decision making in this area.

1. Key points of Note

(a)Overall Results

Figure 1 overleaf shows the trend for Frequency, Occupancy and Usage for the University as a whole over the last six years. The overall utilisation of teaching space across the University has shown a significant increase of 4% year-on-year to 32%, underlining the work done at both a central and departmental level and demonstrating the University’s commitment to improving utilisation of teaching space both at a central and local level.

Frequency has demonstrated a 1% increase to 55%; being the fourth consecutive year that Frequency has risen. This is due to an increase in CTTR frequency by 3% (to 62%), noting however that LTTR frequency fell marginally this year, although remaining broadly at 50%.

Occupancy this year increased to 58% from 51% in 2010. Both central and local spaces showed an improvement in this area; occupancy of CTTRs increased by 8% (to 64%) whilst LTTRs rose 4% (to 48%).

The trend for CTTRs to outperform LTTRs across the University is replicated again this year, as shown in Figure 2 below. Overall usage of CTTRs increased by 7% to 40%, whilst LTTRs usage increasedby 2% to 24%. Whilst clearly encouraging for both CTTRs and LTTRs, the gap in performance between CTTRs and LTTRs did widen to 16% (from 11% in 2010).

Figure 1: Room utilisation trend results

HEFCE document 00/04 ‘Estates Strategies: A Guide to Good Practice’, defines utilisation rates as follows:

Poor:<25%

Fair:25-35%

Good:35% upwards

The overall utilisation figure for all University teaching space was 32%, placing Warwick towards the higher end of the ‘fair’ category. Significantly this year, CTTRs fall into the ‘good’ category with a utilisation of 40%. LTTRs, despite the improvement in performance, remain in the ‘poor’ category.

(b)Results by Campus

Overall, the best utilised campus was Central Campus, with a Usage figure of 35%, a rise of 1% which means it just falls into the HEFCE ‘good’ category. The Gibbet Hill and Westwood campuses showed improvement year on year: with a usage figure of 27% Gibbet Hill moved from the ‘poor’ to ‘fair’ category as per the HEFCE definitions. Whilst Westwood saw some improvement in utilisation to 20%, it remains in the ‘poor’ category.

Figure 3: Frequency, Occupancy and Usage for the three University campuses

This year the Usage of Gibbet Hill campus increased by 8% to 27%, thereby reducing the performance gap with Central Campus from 15% to 8%. This increase in usage was likely to be as a result of the significant overshoot in the School of Life Sciences 11/12 intake. Westwood increased usage by 3%, continuing a small trend of improvement for the campus, but remaining a concern.

Frequency figures increased at the Gibbet Hill and Westwood campuses, showing a rise of 3% and 6% respectively. Despite this, the Gibbet Hill and Westwood campuses remain far behind Central Campus in terms of Frequency, reflecting the reticence of Central Campus based departments to use space at either Gibbet Hill or Westwood. Of note is the fall in Frequency by 2% on Central Campus to 58%; the first time in four years that this figure has fallen. Further work will be undertaken by SMT to try to understand what has driven this, and any findings of note will be reported to the CPARG in due course.

There was an increase in Occupancy across all 3 campuses, with Gibbet Hill showing the greatest movement in this area. Occupancy was 16% higher than last year at Gibbet Hill reversing a trend of significant decline – again this was because of theLife Sciences overshoot. As a result the gap in performance between Central Campus and Gibbet Hill fell to just 3%.

1. Usage figures analysis

14% of rooms surveyed had a utilisation above 50%.The majority of rooms surveyed (57%) fell between 21%-50% usage. Figure 4 compares the performance of CTTRs and LTTRs in this year’s Survey and clearly shows the better performance of CTTRs. The majority of CTTRs showed utilisation between 21% – 50% Usage, whereas the majority of LTTRs had utilisation of between 0 – 30% which again reflects improved management of space for CTTRs compared to LTTRs. 27 CTTRs had a Usage of above 50%, in comparison only 11 LTTRs. Details on individual room usage can be found in Appendices 3-8.

Figure 4: Histogram of LTTR and CTTR Usage figures

(a)CTTR analysis

The best performing CTTRs were on Central Campus; MS.02 (capacity 370) in the Zeeman Building had the highest usage figure of 87%. The large lecture theatres off the Science Concourse continued to be very well used as did other large lecture theatres in Ramphal and Humanities. As in previous years, the worst performing CTTRs were to be found on Westwood Campus, with the ten worst performing CTTRs all being located on Westwood. Indeed, although the number of CTTRs defined as being poorly used fell from 34 to 30 this year, 20 of those were located on Westwood. 12 CTTRs perform poorly in both 2010 and 2011, although only two failed to show any improvement in performance (see Appendix 4).

These results underline the continuing difficulties that the Central Timetabling Team have in encouraging departments to use the Westwood campus. Although there are often perfectly reasonable reasons why departments do not want to use Westwood (and practicalities including walking times do on occasion make it impossible), pressure on central campus timetabling could be significantly alleviated if better use was made of Westwood. When the additional teaching capacity of the new large lecture theatre and phase 3b of the Warwick Business School come online, consideration will need to be given to removing some of the CTTRs at Westwood from the timetabling inventory.

(b)LTTR analysis

68 LTTRs surveyed this year had a Usage figure of less than 25% compared to 82 in 2010 (see Appendix 6). The Warwick Business School had the largest absolute number of these rooms; noting however that these figures do not account for the syndicate style teaching favoured by the School. Syndicate teaching necessarily impacts upon utilisation as seminar rooms are block booked alongside lecture theatres, and when one room type is in use the other is not.

Both Warwick Medical School and Warwick Manufacturing Group had a large absolute number of poorly used LTTRs; 6 and 7 rooms respectively. The results were however an improvement on last year as both departments decreased their percentage of poorly used rooms to 33% (from 44%) and 44% (from 50%) respectively.

Also of concern are LTTRs in Physics, Centre for Applied Linguistics, Engineering and Life Sciences. All of these departments had at least 75% of their LTTRs recorded as poorly used.

29 of the LTTRs were also shown to be poorly used in 2010 (see Appendix 7), with 9 rooms failing to show any improvement this year. However, 18 of these rooms are located in the Warwick Business School, therefore the point about syndicate teaching is very much of relevance.

Recommendation 2: that the CPARG challenge all departments with LTTRs with utilisation of <25% (as noted in Appendix 6) with a view to either (a) converting the rooms to central management or (b) reallocating for alternative use.

Recommendation 3: that, with the exception of those rooms located in WBS, LTTRs that showed poor utilisation in both 2010 and 2011 (as noted in Appendix 7)bereallocated away from departments for alternative use.

(c)Hybrid room analysis

Six ‘hybrid’ rooms were surveyed this year; IMC.002, H4.03, H0.95c, R3.25, A1.25 and A0.26.Hybrid rooms were introduced in 2009 as a means to address poor LTTR usage. The rooms are managed part of the week by the home department and part of the week by the central timetabling team.A hybrid solution enables departments to maintain some flexibility throughout the week to be able to accommodate short-notice bookings in a local room, whilst also enabling the central timetabling team to add additional hours to the timetable to address teaching needs for other departments across the University.

Figure 4, compares CTTR usage against LTTR usage for hybrid rooms with the overall usage shown in parentheses. The arrow indicates the natural route of progression that Space Management and Timetabling would expect hybrid rooms to follow in the years after their conversion. In general, the usage of hybrid rooms is higher when under the control of Central Timetabling despite the fact that the majority of hybrid rooms are only used by CTTR on Mondays and Fridays, which are statistically the least popular teaching days. This would support the conversion of poorly performing LTTRs into Hybrid Rooms.

Figure 5: Scattergraph comparing the Usage of Hybrid rooms when under LTTR and CTTR control

Two rooms were converted to hybrid rooms in 2009 (H4.03 and R3.25) and both continue to perform strongly under CTTR control. Usage in H4.03 increased from 29% in 2010 to 49% in 2011. However, R3.25 saw usage drop from 45% down to 26%, primarily due to a significant drop in Frequency to 38%. Both rooms experienced significant year on year falls in usage when acting as LTTRs, and could be classified as poorly used in this respect.

The IMC Auditorium (IMC.002), capacity 200, was converted to a hybrid in 2010, and is used for 2 hours a week as a centrally timetabled room[2]. The room performed nearly 1.5 times as well when under CTTR control (utilisation of 85% as a CTTR) and reflects the high demand for large lecture theatres.

H0.95c recorded extremely poor usage figures over the week. The overall usage was 4%; 2% when acting as a CTTR and 5% when acting as a LTTR. The location and layout of the room would appear to make it an unfavourable teaching room, and an alternative use would seem to be desirable.

Following last year’s Annual Accommodation Round two more teaching rooms were converted to hybrid rooms in September 2011; A1.25 and A0.26 in Milburn House. Both currently show similar levels of performance when acting as a CTTR and LTTR. Overall Usage (combined LTTR and CTTR control) in A1.25 has improved from 11% in 2010 to 12%, whereas Usage has fallen in A0.26 from 27% to 21% despite being used as a CTTR on Fridays.

Recommendation 4: that consideration be given to an alternative use for room H0.95c based on poor usage figures.

1. Time and Day analysis

Overall, Tuesdays and Thursdays are the preferred teaching days, with Friday the least well used. Analysis shows that Usage peaked each day between 11am-12pm, with the period 10am-1pm being the best used part of the day. The least used time slot across the week was 9am-10am, with usage also falling towards the end of the teaching day.

The lowest Usage figures seen during the week were Monday 9am-10amand Friday 4pm to 5pm.[3] Further breakdown of the 9am-10am teaching slot shows that on Thursday there were 148 of the 277 teachings rooms unused and 183 on the Monday. Needless to say, changes in behaviour that see an increase in usage of these currently poorly used slots would be very beneficial in taking pressure of the timetable.

A breakdown of Frequency shows that the time slots with the highest demand for rooms were Thursday 11am-12pm, 2pm-3pm and Tuesday 10am-11am, 2pm-3pm.

Figure 6: Frequency of room use (all teaching rooms) by time slot

1. Capacity

Results this year reflect the trend seen historically that the larger the room capacity the greater the utilisation. The 3 largest lecture theatres (R0.21, MS.02 and L3) were very well used. The combined Frequency for these 3 rooms was 93% which highlights the increasing pressure faced by large lecture theatres and underlines the need for more resource here. As noted previously, this should reassure the CPARG that the decision to build a new large lecture theatre is justified.

Rooms with a capacity of <10 showed the lowest usage with an overall usage figure of 13%. However, as previously noted, these figures include teaching space allocated to Warwick Business School and as a result the data are impacted by the School’s syndicate style teaching. Of the 26 surveyed rooms with a capacity of 10 or less, 21 are located within WBS.

Year on year comparisons show an encouraging increase in Usage figures across all of the room capacities except the 11-20 range. The largest increases were seen for rooms of 300+ people (an increase of 13% to 76%) and 200-299 (an increase of 13% to 50%).

The only room range to fall in usage was 11-20, which decreased slightly by 1%, despite an increase in Frequency of 4%. Occupancy was the contributing factor to the fall decreasing by 8%. There was also a fall in Occupancy in the 21-34 category. This indicates that rooms of capacity 11-34 were not adequately matched to class size this year, but does not represent an ongoing historical trend.

In terms of Frequency there were two categories decreasing slightly this year; 150-199 and 35-49. The strong increases in Frequency seen for rooms of 50-69, and 70-99 (both increased by 11% this year to 68%) indicate an increased demand for rooms of these sizes. As the design process for the new large lecture theatre progresses, the potential to include smaller rooms in the design should be actively considered, although there will of course be cost implications to this.

Recommendation 5: that consideration be given to the inclusion of smaller teaching rooms in the design of the new large lecture theatre.

1. Bookings on the Central Timetable

Bookings of CTTRs by academic departments was compared against the collected data to determine the number and % of hours that were booked on the Central Timetable but not used. A total of 2,873 hours were booked in week 3 during the hours of 9am and 5pm, with 11% (304 hours) not used. This is flat year-on-year in terms of percentage, but still equates to c. 7 CTTRs remaining unused each day for a full week; this aggregated up over a year gives a significant amount of unused space.