Teaching space utilization at the Central University College,Accra.

Abstract

Studies on Space Utilization in our educational institutions are not new but this is the first time a study on Space Utilization has been conducted in a privately owned tertiary institution in Ghana. This study was conducted specifically to find out the key challenges private universities face in the use of space and time in the day to day administration of their facilities and to provide information on Time Utilization Rate, Space Utilization Rate and Global Utilization Rate for the planning of short and long term educational investments and students intake. In all, 60 Academic staff: 30 Administrators and 14 Technicians making a total of] 04 respondents was involved in the study and data were collected through the use of questionnaire, interview guides and observation checklist. After the analysis of the data, it was revealed that, the Global Utilization Rates of the teaching space facilities from Mondays to Fridays, were tilted towards the morning sessions for the whole 2005/2006 academic year as against the afternoon and evening sessions. The GUR (87.43%) for general purpose classrooms and the average GURs (101.92%) for the laboratories recorded in this research were higher than all the established norms of 80% and between 40-70% for classrooms and specialized rooms by British Department of Education and Science which suggested congestion. It is recommended that the instructional rooms with large class size could be divided to accommodate large student enrolment. Full- time lecturers should be recruited to replace part-time lecturers who do not fully engage the student due to other commitments.