Reviewing the BUILT ENVIRONMENT for the PEOPLE

by Dr. Mikael Powell
After  review of DeBard’s research on Millennial students, and reflection upon my activities to secure their participation in research, it is clear that a  post-occupancy evaluation to solicit information about the likes and dislikes of the facility, and that considers students, should inquire about matters that students value.  The following are common student value questions for the researcher to consider before creating a unique Building POE survey instrument:

o   Do the common spaces promote community building?

o   Does the classroom support a level of trust for the institution (Is the layout straightforward or misleading)?

o   Does the educational space allow students to do meaningful work in class, or are they constantly moving chairs and equipment, or reconfiguring the learning environment to facilitate classroom activities?

o   Are there Internet and virtual classroom capabilities?

o   Does the classroom contribute to a student’s sense of being in control of his or her educational outcomes?

o   Does the classroom and its layout project institutional control (Are areas positioned to monitor participants in spaces)?

o   Is there a hierarchy of accoutrements or amenities that serves to indicate the ‘nicer’ parts of the building and label by classroom assignment, a student’s position in the institution?

o   Will the post-occupancy evaluation be administered in a way that allows access to answer 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week, online, within a determined evaluation period?

o   Does the classroom have integrity (Is the design trying to project an image that it is not)?

With the proceeding in mind, academic leaders, with design professionals, should develop a pre-evaluation discussion plan prior to administering the POE as a way for students, faculty, and administrators to acknowledge existing conditions and initiate the process to empower users of the space.  A POE that considers the culture of each group as well as power and authority issues, is useful in two ways.  First, an effective pre-assessment discussion plan will give the users skills to review their environment critically, while providing a vehicle for reflection and a dialogue with faculty and administration.  This exchange has the potential to be transformative (Freire, 1970).  Secondly, incorporating tenets of a critical pedagogy into the evaluation criteria may provide questions and answers that enable all to become more fully human, for I contend that inhabiting school facilities that are knowingly inadequate, is dehumanizing; a dialogical airing of issues can be liberating for all constituents.  This pre-evaluation discussion plan may be the first step towards encouraging students and teachers to embrace their power to shape learning experiences through their input in a POE.  For example, the discussion  plan could be developed in line with the theories of Paulo Freire (1970) in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, to train the users of the space to be more critically sensitive to the issues created by teaching and learning in an inadequate physical environment.  Freire wrote that the oppressed (students and/or faculty) must be engaged in a dialog with the oppressor (faculty and/or administration) which illustrates historical conditions (the existing classroom and other situations with inadequate spaces) so as to evoke each participant to critically view the world, recognize causes of oppression, and discover themselves as hosts of the oppressors.  This new insight can aid users to objectify and create new possibilities through reflective participation in the discussion plan that subsequently evokes transforming actions enabling the oppressed to strive to be fully vital and human (in my previous research I reviewed humanization as part of a taxonomy of place in online teaching and hybrid coursework, and also discussed the role of self-efficacy in constructivist instruction).  This new way of evaluation may remedy the level of powerlessness in the class by students and teachers who expressed that they did not control their educational experience.