How Sheffield Hallam University is Taking the Guesswork Out of Space Management and Timetabling

Summary

Sheffield Hallam is one of the UK’s largest universities, with over 36,000 students, 4000 staff and over 280,000 alumni around the world. We spoke with Donna Porter, Senior Space Manager at Sheffield Hallam, about the challenges of planning and managing campus spaces and scheduling post-pandemic and how the team uses Hubstar’s space utilization to make data-driven decisions.

How has the way students learn on-campus changed over the last few years, in your experience?

We’re seeing that students are wanting a more blended approach to digital pedagogy and sessions on campus. Student enrollment growth has also been a lot higher than predicted, and most universities haven’t planned for a return to on-campus learning at this scale.

With 36,000 students, it’s critical that we get blended learning right. Covid changed the way forward with blended learning because we need to ensure that we have the right approach to teach our students on campus and to use the estate effectively. We’re solving this by looking at usage hotspots and how utilization can be spread out by measuring if classrooms are actually being used or not.

How is Sheffield Hallam managing this large-scale return to campus?

We’re an applied university, so we have a wide range of courses with a lot of choice. There’s usually a buzz around certain subjects every year, so we try to understand what the current market trends are, and then make campus spaces as flexible as possible. We use flexible floor plates so classrooms and spaces are easier to switch around. We also focus on dividing and opening up space so things can be changed around at short notice, rather than large versus small rooms. We also try to share spaces across departments.

Providing lots of data shapes the services and facilities we provide. After Covid, for example, we used occupancy data to review provision of catering hours to accommodate changing patterns of usage. Data helps us understand which times will be busy and when we’ll need extra staff during lunch hour. Since we’re a city-centre university, it’s important
that we try to keep students on campus.

What’s the most difficult thing about managing space and scheduling in higher ed right now?

At the moment, it’s mostly overbooking. This is where someone may ask for a teaching space for four hours but only use
it for two. Overbooking space, not using it correctly and not booking the right type of space are the biggest problems we’re seeing right now.

How did you measure how students and faculty were using campus spaces before HubStar?

It was very manual. We used to run two audits a year using a team of student ambassadors who would go around to each classroom every hour, on the hour.

The challenge with this was when the data finally came back and was processed and analysed, it was too late. So, we couldn’t tackle the problems in good time and act on the results. On top of this, the return on investment wasn’t efficient as the cost to deliver this manually was so high.

How has Hubstar changed that?

With Hubstar we can see how people are using space and tackle the overbooking problem.

Having the data from HubStar gives us the tools to refine our results, meaning we can speak to faculty directly – but with the facts to back up the conversation.

The building intelligence dashboard helps us a lot. Recently, we shared a dashboard screenshot with a couple of colleagues, and they were fascinated to see that there were only a few people in rooms when they’d expected 20.

It also helps us with space planning moving forward, especially when we are looking at developing new buildings or changing existing space. We can now also track and understand what spaces students are using, giving us data to understand what size or type of space is working. It’s basically changed the way we collect data and the time in which we can analyse and use it.

How has utilization data impacted timetabling and measuring student attendance?

The data we get from HubStar allows us to see what volume of students are on campus, as well as where and when they are turning up across time. This type of data means we can track behaviors on campus as well as attendance for classes.

A good example of this is when the semester starts, students are excited to come to the campus, but after two weeks numbers begin to drop off, which we can see reflected in the data.

Where have you seen the most return on investment since implementing HubStar?

Mostly planning. We can look at the whole estate from a space management point of view and understand how that aligns with classes. We can see what’s being used against what’s being booked, and we get more insight into curriculum delivery, which is important because we’re currently changing that.

We are fortunate to have a combined timetabling and space management team, so once the timetabling team has input the class schedules, the space management team can allocate space against the timetable schedule efficiently. Curriculum demand is important and changes a lot, so being able to see the change in levels and how this applies to planning out teaching space is really critical.

How has using HubStar helped shape your space planning strategy for the future?

HubStar allows us to see how space is being used and occupied, and helps us predict the space we’ll need going forward.

As a university, we are delivering a long-term estates masterplan. HubStar allows us to manage this project and decide what size of space to build, how much is required, what size of groups are going into those spaces and if we need to adapt this plan to changing learning and student needs.