Reaching out to stakeholders on the net

This article originally appeared on the Future Online website as part of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) support programme.

Something that can make or break a successful capital project is whether you take into account the views and opinions of the various stakeholders (staff, parents, pupils and other collaborators) and then keep them fully engaged throughout the process. While there are a number of ways to ensure that opinion is gathered before the event for capital projects, technology offers huge potential for supporting and event managing the engagement process.

Some high-profile technology hit the headlines with respect to engagement in the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme, one of the most impressive being Middlesbrough’s use of the 'virtual reality' online service Second Life for the new-build at Acklam Grange School. Middlesbrough Council worked with a specialist Second Life builder to create a to-scale virtual 3D representation of Acklam Grange School so that staff, pupils and any other interested party could experience, and subsequently comment, on the design of the school before it actually went into production.

This has had some unexpected cost savings in the real world. Once the building was created in Second Life, the designers were able to populate the buildings with 1,000 avatars (the characters people take on in Second Life), to represent the 1,000 pupils at the school, and then control their movements around the building to highlight the flow of children around the school during lesson changes and breaks. As a result of this the designers discovered that the doors were not big enough!

"The Second Life build gave us a much better idea of some of the issues we would be facing with the new building,” says Nikola Bunyan, director of resources at Acklam Grange School. “By running modelling we were able to spot where the problems were and then change the specifications before the build started, the biggest problem being the size of the entrance and exit doors. These were just not going to be big enough to handle the volumes necessary at key breaks during the school day. If we hadn’t run tests in Second Life beforehand we would not have discovered this until after the building was opened, at which point we would have had to retro-fit new doors. We estimate that the Second Life project has saved us up to £30,000.”

On top of the obvious cost saving, the Second Life project also allowed those involved to get a real feel for the space, and therefore a deeper understanding of how to design those spaces.

“The Second Life build was crucial in helping us visualise spaces and sizes of classroom,” says Rachel Steel, Middlesbrough’s BSF project officer. “It helped us to visualise what furniture to put in as well as to understand what the two-story void space would be like in the main atrium space.”

It has also helped students to understand their new school; when the school was in the build phase students were able to 'walk' through buildings with laptops and see what the space for any part of the building they were in would look like when it was finished. Even down to decorating and furniture.

Another system talked about a lot is Design Your School, which is a web-based program created to involve stakeholders in any capital project – new-build, remodelling or refurbishment – in creating, modelling and signing off their learning spaces.

Once a virtual space is created in Design Your School it can be shared by anyone using a computer that can connect to the internet. The extent to which they can manipulate the design depends on the levels of permissions they are given.

But engagement is not all about high-end technology as Futurelab’s Professor Tim Rudd explains. “You need a mix of digital and non-digital techniques,” he says. “In keeping with this ethos, we’ve created a string of resources that we call Thinking Space, which were put together in co-operation with Cabe and Portsmouth Council. Aimed at the pre-engagement stage of a capital investment project, these essentially take the form of a series of workshops to engage staff and pupils in the process of designing their new school.”

Thinking Space aims to help those undergoing redesign or rebuild projects to create informed visions of the future and therefore to think differently before planning their journey. “We used these tools with five school in Worcestershire, running five sessions with each of the schools with staff and pupils,” says Tim. “We worked with about 8-12 pupils in each school and then over a day helped them develop ideas about what they hoped would be the future of learning. At the end of the sessions we helped them create a ‘mashup’ video of their ideas, which was presented to the senior management teams at the various schools. The sessions were incredibly insightful and really helped put the learners voices at the heart of everything.”

Similalry, the British Council for School Environments' (BCSE) School Works doesn’t necessarily rely on ICT in the initial stages. “We generally run a one-day design festival,” says the BCSE’s Jenny Thomas. “During this we work with students, staff and parents on their aspirations for the design of the school as well as looking at ideas for the spaces. We also run other sessions around sustainability and health and well being.”

Jenny explains that it’s all about giving staff and pupils ownership over their environment. “This often means they respect, understand and feel more a part of the school than they would otherwise,” she says.

Tim believes ICT can be crucial in continuing this engagement process, but schools tend to use their existing structures, which aren’t always the most effective. “Using things like school councils can be intimidating for some pupils,” he says. “Whereas using social media or different kinds of online survey techniques can allow pupils to be much more honest and open about their ideas. Social media can enable kids to have voice even possible anonymously. But again it’s important to use a mixed range of channels and media; everything from setting up discussion groups in social media to using mobiles to vote on key issues to do with school design.”

Tim also says that mobile technology, such as geo location, can be used to drop a comment into the actual location to say whether people like something or not. “We’ve even used Google Sketchup to help children design their environment,” he says. “Schools need to look at a whole range of media, whether this is having a group working on special projects to create anything from radio, podcasts and vodcasts that can feed into the senior management team or using social media discussion groups and blogs to keep everyone in the loop.”

Although there is a vast range of technology out there to help school engage all the various stakeholders in the process, this still seems to be an area that is at the peripheries of schools’ consideration. Unquestionably, this should not be the case, indeed keeping channels open and garnering thoughts and opinions from a wide range of stakeholders throughout the process could make the management teams job easier and certainly make the transition to the new school smother and less likely to include nasty design surprises.

Further information

This article originally appeared on the Future Online website.