Recommendations

Opportunity Area 1. Guiding Principles

The Project Team proposes the following set of guiding principles, developed based on feedback from campus stakeholders, as well as comprehensive analyses of formal and informal learning spaces.

The Stanford Academic Experience. Design spaces to enhance teaching, learning, and discovery; meet the expectations of students coming to and faculty and instructors teaching at Stanford; and support the distinctive Stanford academic experience
Engaging Spaces. Create spaces that enable all participants to engage in learning, through active involvement in discussions and activities occurring in the learning space
Equitable and Inclusive Spaces. Offer spaces that are inclusive of needs and backgrounds of all students and instructors, providing equitable access to the spaces and to the activity in the spaces.
User Experience. Students and instructors should have a consistent, accessible and reliable user experience with minimal barriers.
Effective and Efficient Space Usage. Classroom design and campus space allocation should make the most effective and efficient use of the space allocated.

Continuous Improvement. Innovations, pilots, and field research should aim to identify useful advances that can be scaled to general pool classrooms and operationalized.
Campus Partnerships. Space allocation and design should be considered holistically, serving both the campus-wide needs as well as local or department needs.
Sustainability. Predictable, multi-year refresh plans and budgets should be implemented. Refresh funding should be allocated at the time of capital project budget approval to ensure long-term sustainability.
Toward the Future. Spaces should be designed in anticipation of future applications, where possible minimizing barriers to change, and with the concepts of agility and flexibility in mind.
Governance. While many organizational entities “touch” classrooms and informal learning spaces, these spaces should also be guided by an overarching governance structure that has a strategic perspective on classroom planning, design, fit-out and management.

Opportunity Area 2. Plan for Physical Investments

Areas of opportunity are identified to improve the learning space inventory, along with recommendations that may be considered for implementation over the period of the Strategic Plan. Four areas of opportunity are identified:

Area 2.1. Rightsizing to Improve Alignment Between Classroom Sizes and Section Sizes, and to Conform More Closely to Modern Planning Standards and Best Practices.
Area 2.2. Classroom Furnishing and Design Upgrades
Area 2.3. Technology Upgrades and Innovations
Area 2.4. New Taxonomy to Describe Classroom Spaces
Area 2.5. Classroom Project Planning

Opportunity Area 3. Informal Learning Spaces

Ways are suggested in which Stanford can develop a better understanding of its existing inventory of informal learning spaces, in order to improve, add, or expand spaces where warranted and/or provide guidelines for creating informal learning spaces, as appropriate, in new building projects. These investigations and the resulting opportunities should be aligned with current and future Stanford initiatives, in particular, ResX and the Town Center Project.

Area 3.1. Survey and Document Informal Learning Spaces

Opportunity Area 4. Governance

Opportunity areas are identified for providing ongoing strategic governance in planning, managing and investing in Stanford’s classrooms and informal learning spaces so that all entities can work toward common goals for creating and maintaining high quality spaces that support creative and innovative teaching and learning.

Area 4.1. Structure for Strategic Governance of Learning Spaces
Area 4.2. Coordination Among Organizations
Area 4.3. Performance Metrics and Continuous Improvement
Area 4.4. Unified Data Sources and Resources
Area 4.5. Incorporate a Research Component and Engage Faculty Expertise

Opportunity Area 5. Budget

A sustained, predictable funding plan is required to establish classroom standards and ensure consistency and reliability in faculty, instructor, student, and administrative experiences.

Area 5.1. Capital Projects & Predictable Refresh Budgets
Area 5.2. Sustained Funding, and Predictable Refresh Plans

Opportunity Area 6. Communication Strategy

Develop a communications strategy that ensures stakeholders have ongoing opportunities to review and comment on classroom planning proposals as they evolve over time.

Download SCR Final Report part 3 – Opportunities and Recommendations