Date of Award

1-1-2023

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

Department of Educational Policy and Leadership

Content Description

1 online resource (xiii, 143 pages) : illustrations (some color)

Dissertation/Thesis Chair

Alan Wagner

Committee Members

Mitch Leventhal, Kai Zhou

Keywords

College students, College campuses

Subject Categories

Education Policy

Abstract

This study has explored student’ use of space and time on campus at a public, urban research university in the northeast region of the United States. The study aimed to uncover how students spend time in classrooms and, separately, in public spaces (other than classrooms) on campus. The study complements prior work on the use of space in higher education in two ways. First, it extends what is known about how much time students spend (hours per week, times visited per week) in different kinds of campus space. Further, its focus on behavior – the decisions of students on where to spend time and doing what – comes alongside and informs interpretations of substantial work on student perceptions of and satisfaction with campus space as they influence engagement, learning, and favorable attachment to the campus.This study is exploratory, making use of information collected in a separate space utilization study undertaken by the facilities and planning office at the university concerned. That project, prepared for administrative use to better understand student and return, relied on perceptions of campus space and its association with enrollment and retention decisions, relied on student responses to a survey administered on-line. The main contribution of this study resides in the measures, at the individual student level, that distinguish, first, time spent in classrooms and time spent in public spaces on campus (other than classrooms) and, second, time spent on learning activities and time spent on social engagement/activities. The survey instrument that collected information from participating students on time use applied designations of the campus on the two types of space – classrooms or public space on campus (other than classrooms) - in the relevant items. The study relies on the detailed measures of time use (on the four dimensions just described) developed for a sample of students at a public, urban research university in the northeast region of the United States. The analysis sample, drawn from a larger sample of 487 students responding to the survey, includes 172 students who provided complete information on time use on the relevant items in the survey. The information obtained through items in the survey instrument appears to be useful in generating detailed quantitative estimates of time use in campus facilities. That is an important conclusion from this study and, as indicated, an important contribution both with respect to the detailed estimates of time use and to the use of surveys to obtain relevant information on time use. In general, the activities in which students engage in different types of campus space align with what facilities planners intended. However, important shares of time are spent in activities not intended as primary uses for the different types of space. With respect to patterns of time use for activities other than intended in campus public spaces or in classrooms, there appear to be modest differences by student personal and program attributes.

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