James Madison University
Office of Institutional Research

Space Utilization: Academic Use

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) periodically collects data to measure the efficiency of academic space use. Demonstrating this efficiency is critical toward any University initiative to add instructional space for classrooms or laboratories. The Office of Institutional Research will generate JMU's data by joining inventory data with class section data. OIR will deliver "what is being taught, how many students are taught, and where."

Use these pages to see the class records that contribute to the current utilization statistics, below. The study is based on SCHEV methodology. To find the most current University-wide utilization statistics, SCHEV standards, and links to searches by building and room, click here and go to the bottom of this page.

Note for Fall 2007: The results results below are based on 11/08/07 data and likely to become official. Updates to inventory and class data should have been made by October 15th. The official data was taken from PeopleSoft Student on November 8th. Contrary to the past, SCHEV is collecting the data again this year instead of every other year.

Resources

Please click on the following link to download the power point presentation given by OIR and the Office of the Registrar in May 2006. It contains details still relevant to the Fall 2007 SCHEV Space Utilization Study. After you click on the link, you can either open the presentation in your browser, or save it to you preferred drive and then open it with MS PowerPoint.

 SCHEV Utilization Study May 2006 Presentation

Check here (search the JMU space inventory) to see if a classroom or class lab is coded "110" or "210" and included in this study. Open labs are not included in the study.

Use the PeopleSoft Student Administration System to update critical data that is missing from specific classes that meet in Classrooms and Class Laboratories (room use codes of 110 and 210). On the rare occasion that this is impossible, please contact Chuck DeHart, download this MS Excel file and follow the instructions inside.

SCHEV Utilization Study Add Record for Classrooms and/or Class Laboratories

Academic Departments: Important

The current utilization analysis presented in these web pages is based on PeopleSoft class section data and inventory data from November 8, 2007.

  • Update class data in the PeopleSoft Student Administration system before October 15th, 2007.

  • Questions about room use, i.e., classroom vs. class laboratory, should be sent to Rosemary Brenner as soon as possible. Inventory is due to SCHEV no later than November 1, 2007.

Department accuracy and completeness of PeopleSoft class data is important. Omissions may result in understating classroom or class laboratory utilization.

The most common problems in class meeting data are:

  • No facility ID for all meeting times and places,

  • Days when the class meeting pattern is "TBA" or missing (instead of something like "MWF"),

  • Start Time and End Time are missing or equal to "0100".

  • Rooms have been changed from instruction or lab to other uses (or vice versa) without notifying  Space Management.

Other tips:

  • Please use the "Class Component" feature in PeopleSoft to distinguish between lecture sections and labs, field placement including student teaching, seminars, independent studies, theses, etc. This is very helpful for utilization and other analyses.

  • Sometimes students are enrolled into a single section for something like a special topics research lab or class. Once enrolled, the students are dispersed across a variety of labs/classrooms and faculty depending upon their subject. The actual meeting time and place may not be updated in PeopleSoft. OIR will need to know which of these activities occurs in classrooms and class laboratories (room use codes 110 and 210). Please estimate the distribution of this kind of activity and enter the data into the PeopleSoft Student Administration system. The alternative is to understate the actual use of the classroom or lab to SCHEV.

OIR Facilities Information will answer more of your facilities related questions.


Utilization Statistics Fall 2007 (as of 11/08/07)
Room Use Code Room Use Description

Number of Rooms

Weekly Hours

Total Stations Scheduled

Total Enrollment

Weekly Hours of Room Use

Percent Occupied

Weekly Hours of Station Use

110

CLASSROOM

167

6,092

105,133

73,368

36

70%

25.5

210

CLASS LABORATORY

72

1,996

20,218

13,423

28

66%

18.4

SCHEV Standards (Formulas in parentheses)

Room Use Description (Room Use Code)

Weekly Hours Of Room Use

 (Weekly Hours/Total Number of Rooms)

Percent Occupied

 (Total Enrollment/Total Stations Scheduled)

Weekly Hours Of Station Use

(Weekly Hrs of Room Use * Percent Occupied)

Classroom (110) 40 60% 24
Class Laboratory (210) 24 75% 18

Search Links


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Office of Institutional Research

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Last Revised: November 12, 2007.

Author: Chuck DeHart, OIR, JMU.