Plans for an Observation Study

Things are hotting up on the pedagogic research front. We have a small window of opportunity to observe and photograph students in the existing Library before one of its’ key components, the Integrated Support Services (ISS) Help Desk, is removed from the premises forever to it’s temporary home in the Erasmus block.

Once Augustine House becomes “online”, the ISS Help Desk will move into the new library and learning centre and will be rebranded as the “iZone” with the remit of being the first port of call for students who seek help and advice on a range of issues that cover accommodation, finance to IT and library matters.

One of the things we would like to do on the project is to compare and contrast the existing Library with Augustine House. In order to do that, we will need to observe how it is currently being used by our students. As part of our observational study, we are considering breaking the Library up into different “zones”, which might look like this:

• The Loans and Returns area
• The ISS Help Desk area
• The Group Study area
• The main Library area
• The Quiet Room area
• The Open Access area

Each “zone” has a different kind of student activity within it. This would be useful for us to capture and record and to compare it against Augustine House and to see what kind of changes to student learning behaviour has taken place. Obviously, it would not be a complete like-for-like comparison as Augustine House is a far greater learning space that encompasses a many elements to it that was never afforded to the current library space.

We hope to start the observation study in the week commencing Monday 27th April, 2009.

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