This quarter, a faculty will be opened in the weekend of the exam period for study purposes. The 24th and 25th of June, this Saturday and Sunday, the Faculty of IDE (Industrial Design Engineering) will be opened. You can find more than 600 study spots and 400 computers, opened between 9:00 and 22:00. For more information:
Why this weekend?
Ideally we would like to have more study spots during the last three weekends of a quarter, this made it a difficult choice to pick one weekend. In March we have had more than 1000 answers on our survey concerning study spots and study times (link). We concluded more than 50% of the students wanted to study on campus in all of the last three weekends of a quarter. The weekend between week 8 and week 9 was marked as the most wished. If we translate this numbers on Q4, this will result in the weekend of the 24th and 25th of June.
The faculty that will be opened the 24th and 25th will be IDE, this is near the Library, has a lot of study spots and computers. You can find more detailed info on the availability of study spots in this figure.
History
In 2013 ORAS wrote an initiative to open up the Aula in the weekend during the exam period. The reason for this was the Library, which was very crowded. The Aula was chosen because it is situated close to the Library, in this way it functions as an overflow of the Library. On busy days a lot of students come to the Aula to study, which means the Aula will be kept open in the weekends of the exam period. We still saw the Aula was not a complete solution when it comes to study spots in the weekend. Not everyone appreciates the Aula as a good place to study, besides it can be full during same days.
That’s why ORAS is in favour of opening up a faculty in the weekend. Study spots in the Library are appreciated a lot by students, but when we dig deeper students see the faculty as study spot number one. By opening up more buildings you can choose the study place to like most: in silence in the Library, a quiet spot in the Aula or a computer or group work place at IDE. Because of the growth in student population and growth in demand for study spots, we finally managed to open a faculty in a weekend in June. We see this achievement as a good first step and we hope students come here to study and value this opportunity.
Next year
You can expect ORAS will not leave it at this moment. We do not have conformation for more weekends next year, but we will talk about the whole academic calender soon. In this way we can, together with the university, investigate which days and weekends we expect to see as bottleneck and take action. If IDE will be used a lot this weekend, we expect more possibilities to continue this opening hours for a faculty. We expect this measurement will be needed for one year, from September 2018 Pulse will be realised. This building offers a lot of extra study spots, with opining hours comparable to the Library. http://campusdevelopment.tudelft.nl/interview/interview-pulse/
If you have questions, suggestions or ideas, don’t hesitate to contact Natalie@oras.nl
