With our project review drawing ever closer to its due date; we thought it would be worthwhile sharing some other interesting tidbits that we have garnered from our latest student survey. In our previous blog post, we had a look at what students generally thought about the Hub . This time around, we will take a look at other aspects of the survey responses.
Students from different faculties find some areas of the Hub more useful than others. The graph below shows the distribution of responses, sorted by faculty, to a question asking students what they find most useful in Hub Central.
It is no surprise that Engineering students find the Maths Learning Centre more useful (proportionally) than Humanities students; or that printing is considered roughly equally important among students from all faculties.
The space can mean many things to students; it can be a focal point of meeting other students for group assignments, a place to get a quick bite to eat or simply a place to socialise. To some, this may come across as a form of distraction to students learning, but the underlying design philosophy of the Hub was to provide an environment that was conducive to study. We asked students to rank how they use the Hub in order of use, below is the resultant graph.
Students were able to add their own comments at the end of the survey. Most were positive, some negative and others nonsensical, but we read them all.
Whilst we had a few comments that weren’t exactly enthusiastic about the project:
I dislike the learning hub. I liked it better when it was a courtyard.
It is a horrible impersonal space, good only for transiting quickly into the library proper
Those of us who have been associated with the university for many years see the Hub as an eyesore that has replaced a lovely central square that was the envy of students at other unis.
There were plenty of positive comments as well:
I think it has definitely opened up the University to a huge extent and really gives you more of an idea of who’s at the Uni and gives a great place to meet up and study.
The planning for this project reflects in the really useful and creative end product. These sorts of facilities are more necessary particularly for self directed learning activities involving small groups. It’s a very convenient and user friendly central place for busy post graduate students to meet and discuss projects. Thanks.
Great addition at the moment where volumes of students have increased and demands for education facilities have improved. A timely venture, I would believe =)
What do you think, does the Hub help provide a flexible learning space?
Discussion
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