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:
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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. 