Focus groups to improve teaching spaces, March 20-21

Students: Tuesday, March 20, 7-8 p.m., UAA/APU Consortium Library, Room 307
Staff: Wednesday, March 21, 8-9 a.m. and 12-1 p.m., Administration Building, Room 204
Faculty: Wednesday, March 21, 9-10 a.m. and 1-2 p.m., Administration Building, Room 204

Are you faculty, staff or a student at the University of Alaska Anchorage main campus? Would you like to impact how the campus uses its teaching spaces? Sightlines, a facilities asset advisory firm, will host five focus group sessions at UAA--two each for faculty and staff and one for students. Please join us at one of the sessions listed above!

UAA administration has asked Sightlines to help them understand its unmet programmatic requirements and develop a strategy to optimize the campuses' teaching spaces. Sightlines believes that an understanding of the utilization rates, the space use and the space users' requirements are key in identifying why spaces are functioning effectively or not.
 
What is the objective of the focus group discussions?
We want to capture the university's faculty, staff and student perceptions and expectations for our teaching spaces. Sightlines has collected an abundance of information on approximately 210 teaching spaces at the UAA main campus. This information includes room schedules and occupancy rates for the past four semesters. Each room was visually inspected to assess conditions and note the available technology within each space.
 
Faculty, staff and student perceptions and expectations will be compared to the statistical data noted above. There are many aspects of teaching spaces that are unquantifiable and known only to those who are actively teaching or learning in the rooms. It is Sightlines' goal to integrate the statistical findings with the comments of faculty and students to determine a plan that best meets the programmatic and capital goals of the institution.
 
Please call or email Lesley Lepley at (907) 786-1343 or lnlepley@alaska.edu to R.S.V.P. or with any questions you may have. Please encourage your staff, faculty and students to attend!