Student Voices Create Better Learning Spaces

Who’s invited to planning meetings for your campus learning spaces? Leadership? Check. Faculty? Sometimes. Staff? Depends. Students? Hmmmm. Unfortunately, a scenario where students—the actual end users of learning spaces—are not included in design conversations is very common.

Haworth conducted a study on the campus design planning process. We explored how design projects can be more inclusive of student input by engaging their participation from concept to completion. What follows are the highlights of this research.

A Gap in the Existing Process

Despite being stakeholders who learn, grow, and build their futures in campus spaces (and in most cases, the actual end users), students are often underrepresented or overlooked in the decision-making process as higher-education learning environments are designed.

We interviewed students from various universities to hear, firsthand, their thoughts on participating in campus design. Their responses indicate that students have limited opportunities for input or are asked for input too late when it can no longer be acted upon. This gap in the planning process means that often valuable student input is never tapped by decision makers. As a result, students may not end up with optimal learning spaces. 

Too little, too late can lead to feelings of frustration among students. While they’re expected to contribute financially to their education, they often feel excluded from the decisions that shape their experience.

Students also pointed out that while mechanisms for student input on design projects exist on most campuses, meaningful participation in decision-making is often limited. Many described a disconnect between the structures in place—such as student governments or the institution itself—and the actual influence students feel they have. In many cases, students didn’t feel they had much say at all.

Why Student Voice Matters

Including student voices in decision-making is not just a matter of fairness, it’s a matter of accountability and recognition for a key stakeholder group on campus. As customers in learning spaces, students often aren’t getting the academic environment that best supports their education. Not only is there a gap in the design process, the lack of student voice in designing learning spaces creates a gap between actual and optimal student experience.

When designing campus spaces, the experience is often the goal of the design itself.  How can you design an experience without those who will be able to describe their ideal experience best?

How to Prioritize Student Voice in Design

Knowing that gaps offer opportunities, we then talked to group of university design leaders to see how student voice might be better captured and implemented. Specifically, we set out to discover how campus leaders can prioritize student voices to create more vibrant, effective, and student-centered environments.

The leaders shared examples of approaches that ensure student input is gathered at the right time, in the right amounts. They use a structured engagement framework that incorporates meaningful student participation at every stage of the project, from the early days of conceptualization through project completion. Using the framework leads to creating spaces that foster community, collaboration, and learning.   

A structured engagement framework clearly defines when and how students will be involved in decision-making. In the master planning stage, 2–5 years before a project is built, students participate in visioning and have voting rights on key themes and priorities.

Once the project commences, student input is actively sought throughout, when meaningful changes can be made. During the post-occupancy evaluation, 6–12 months after project completion, student input is gathered through surveys, focus groups and evaluations. These insights are used to not only understand the success of the project being surveyed but also inform the design process for future projects.

Use of a structured engagement framework has multiple benefits: improved user satisfaction, community relations, and fundraising support, as well as better space utilization and cost savings. And, by engaging students at every stage from concept to completion, they are properly acknowledged in the way key stakeholders deserve to be. 

What Student Engagement Looks Like

Knowing that student engagement leads to better outcomes is one thing. Capturing student voice is another. We reached back out to the university design leaders to discover how they engage students in the design of learning spaces. Here are some of their key tactics:

• In-Person Conversations and Events – Town halls, workshops, focus groups, and planned gatherings foster direct engagement. One school invited their Student Planning Association to a planning workshop and found the students to be highly engaged and knowledgeable. Another used VR goggles at a live event, allowing students to immerse themselves in 360-degree views of the campus model.
• Discovery Tours – Tours of existing or proposed sites give students something tangible to react to—both positively and critically—rather than having to articulate ideas from abstract concepts.
• Synchronous Feedback Opportunities, In-Person and Online – Set up posters or maps in high-traffic student areas like dorms, libraries, dining halls, and lounges where students can leave comments at their convenience. Or use a QR code that directs students to a website or social media account on a platform like Instagram or TikTok, where they can share thoughts and ideas.
• Student Leadership Networks – Student leaders can serve as conduits to the student body. This approach takes time but can be an effective way to gather student input.
• Email Campaigns with Survey Links – Email outreach pairs well with other tactics and can include a link directly to an online survey.
• Swarm Polling – Equip pollsters with iPads, find a high-traffic student area on a nice day, and engage directly to yield a high volume of targeted feedback in a short time. 
• Existing Data Sources – Many departments and units across campus already collect student feedback as part of their regular operations. This built-in data can offer valuable insights into areas like housing, dining, transportation, safety, and facilities, without needing to start from scratch.

Make it Fun

However you choose to engage with students, make it fun! 

Planning campus spaces might be serious work, but that doesn’t mean the process has to be boring. Adding some energy with balloons, snacks, music, and even the campus mascot, can turn a feedback session into something students look forward to attending.  

Higher-Education Leaders Better Serve Students

The recent study on capturing student voices for the design of learning spaces is just one part of Haworth’s body of research. From working with leaders at all academic levels, we know optimal campus spaces foster connection and adapt for the future of learning. These kinds of learning spaces can only be created when campus leadership, designers, students, and solution providers like Haworth work together.