Home Away from Home: How Undergraduate and Graduate Students Experience Space and Place in a new Health Sciences Building

The Canadian Journal of Nursing Research · 7 authors, 5 centres

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TL;DR

This qualitative focus group study explored how undergraduate and graduate students experience space and place in a newly constructed Health Sciences building, identifying four key themes—physical form, connectedness, identity, and learning—that shaped students' learning experiences and professional development.

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This qualitative study used focus groups with undergraduate and graduate students to explore how a newly constructed Health Sciences building shaped their learning experiences and professional development. Four key themes emerged: physical form, connectedness, identity, and learning. Students described the building as welcoming, open, and modern, with accessible design features including gender-neutral bathrooms and wheelchair accessibility. They valued the proximity of faculty offices and varied learning spaces that supported different learning styles and facilitated informal interprofessional collaboration. Barriers included limited parking for mature graduate students, restricted study room availability, elevator and washroom wait times, classroom technology malfunctions, and limited classroom space for flexible use. Students noted a lack of formal interprofessional collaboration opportunities.

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other

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research methods

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100% · A

ORIGINAL PAPER

PMC10619180

Home Away from Home: How Undergraduate and Graduate Students Experience Space and Place in a new Health Sciences Building

The Canadian Journal of Nursing Research

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ABSTRACT

Abstract Buildings contribute in crucial ways to how students experience learning spaces. Four schools within a faculty (nursing, nutrition, occupational and public health, and midwifery) moved into a new Health Sciences building Fall of 2019. This new building created a unique opportunity to explore the intersection between higher education and learning space design, informed by concepts of space and place, and students’ profession specific and interprofessional learning experiences in a new Health Sciences building. A qualitative descriptive design was used. All undergraduate and graduate students within the four schools were invited to participate. Focus groups were undertaken to gain a rich understanding of students’ experiences and views of their space and place of learning. Data collection involved focus group data from profession specific participant users and interprofessional participant users. Inductive thematic analysis of focus group transcripts generated an initial coding scheme, key themes, and data patterns. Codes were sorted into categories and then organized into meaningful clusters. A building planning development project document relating to the vision, intentions, design, and planning for the new building provided content from which to view the study findings. The study data contributed to the conversation about space and place and its influence on higher learning within specific intraprofessional and interprofessional student groups and provided insight into the process of actualizing a vision for a new learning space and the resultant experiences and perceptions of students within that space/place. Keywords: higher education, space and place, learning environments

CITATION EXPORT

Karen LeGrow, Sherry Espin, Lois Chui et al.. Home Away from Home: How Undergraduate and Graduate Students Experience Space and Place in a new Health Sciences Building. The Canadian Journal of Nursing Research. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1177/08445621231190581

AUTHORS

7 · 5 CENTRES

Karen LeGrow, Sherry Espin, Lois Chui, Don Rose, Richard Meldrum, Mary Sharpe, Enza Gucciardi

1Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing, Faculty of Community Services, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, ON, Canada
2McMaster Children’s Hospital, Faculty of Community Services, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, ON, Canada
3School of Occupational and Public Health, Faculty of Community Services, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, ON, Canada
4School of Midwifery, Faculty of Community Services, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, ON, Canada
5School of Nutrition, Faculty of Community Services, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, ON, Canada