Positive Findings Regarding a New Trend in University Architecture Evaluating Student Impressions of an Innovative Academic Building

Son Nguyen,William H Zywiak,Kristin Kennedy

doi:10.14738/abr.69.5149

Abstract

Bryant University recently opened a spectacularly visually appealing, new building, the Academic Innovation Center (AIC). It was designed to promote innovative problem solving classroom experiences for business and liberal arts students alike with a spacious and wide open feeling. Bryant is among a group of other universities who are turning to radically different building design. Kamal (et.al.) in a lengthy white paper captures the essence of why universities are turning towards such novel architecture [1]. Students and faculty alike are enjoying the pleasure of working in such an aesthetically pleasing place. The intentions of this paper were to capture the emotions and perceptions of students regarding their impressions of the new building as it just opened, and capture perceptions on whether the new design really did effect a feeling of engagement and collaboration. Upon the opening semester, we surveyed the students that fall with a pre and post survey (September and December) regarding perceptions of engagement, collaboration, and enjoyment. We hoped that the administered survey would illustrate that the new space did indeed foster a feeling of academic success and bolster a new excitement for learning with the students. Varied statistical techniques were used to capture diverse results.

Highlights

Bryant University recently opened a spectacularly visually appealing, new building, the Academic Innovation Center (AIC)
Experimenting with new classroom design initially came to the forefront in the 1970s with the concept of Open Classrooms, which did not have a positive impact on the classroom experience as educators had hoped
In one of the questions they were asked to rank the features of the new building from 1 to 4 in regard to one’s ability to learn in the AIC, and the four choices were physical layout of the room, general ambience, technology, or collection of different classes

Summary

Introduction

Bryant University recently opened a spectacularly visually appealing, new building, the Academic Innovation Center (AIC). Finding 2: We created a boxplot, Graph 1, of the overall feelings from September and again in December, divided by level and all responses were at least 5 or greater, so the responses indicated that the students liked the AIC building.

Results

Conclusion