Great things can happen in a classroom, but you have to make it happen. Academics and specialists agree that the learning process can be effectively improved if universities apply strategies and management in order to optimize classrooms, teacher and student schedules, campus facilities and other variables of the learning experience.
Professor and Ph.D. Maryellen Weimer explains in an article published in Faculty Focus that “we (teachers) tend to take them (classrooms) for granted, partly because spaces in general have become less differentiated (...). But classrooms are unique spaces – sacred in the sense that what happens in a classroom can change lives. There’re spaces dedicated to learning, where students find the motivation to learn, and where learning happens in conjunction with others and from others. Classroom learning is expedited by an expert, one who has a sincere commitment to fostering the learning of others. That expert is responsible for directing the learning and judging whether it has occurred and to what degree.”
But, what really happens when classrooms are crowded; or if there´s enough space for a hundred students and there are only three of them attending a class; or scheduling is chaos and teachers and students arrive early in the morning for one single class, and then have to wait four or five hours for the next one? Does this sound familiar to you?
There is a lot of information about this because it's a common and major problem for higher education institutions. It's a global concern that has been growing with the expansion of universities. Additionally, this situation becomes more complex when we talk about nationwide institutions that try to manage many campuses at the time from the headquarters, instead of creating self-sufficient management units in every campus for these matters.
So far, we can summarize the most common campus management unresolved issues are as follows:
Universities have been using technology, like ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems, to try solve – or at least deal – with these permanent challenges, and this is a good sign of how higher education institutions are more concerned about optimizing their processes to become more efficient.
But many have realized that ERP solutions aren’t able to solve the problem. These tools are very useful to gather and organize data and tasks, to plan several actions, but what about simulating different scenarios?
At the beginning of every semester, universities need to know how internal demand is going to be in order to efficiently assign resources, and they need it fast because once they know how many students they will have, they need to know:
These kinds of questions can be answered by using simulation tools that help campus management:
This is what experts call ‘management intelligence’, a kind of solution that doesn’t only solve particular problems, but becomes an essential part of campus management because it helps to build long-term strategic plans, provides instant feedback, contributes to process standardization, and constant improvement, amongst other benefits.
A simulation software applied to higher education management also allows to normalize and standardize all the previous work and data that a university has developed historically, trying to manage all campus needs, and put it on track to develop long-term strategies that help universities achieve their goals and deliver a better learning experience.
Which of these issues are more crucial in your local market? We invite you to share your experience.