On Serendipitous Campus Meetings: A User Survey

Abstract

With campuses opening up and stimulating interactions among different campus users more and more, we aim to identify the characteristics of successful meeting places (locations) on campus. These can help practitioners such as campus managers and directors to further optimize their campus to facilitate unplanned or serendipitous meetings between academic staff and companies. A survey on three Dutch campuses, including questions on both services and locations, was analyzed both spatially and statistically using principal component (PC) and regression analysis. Four PCs were found for services (Relax, Network, Proximity and Availability) and three PCs were found for locations (Aesthetics, Cleaned and Indoor Environment). Personal characteristics as explanatory variables were not significant or only had very small effect sizes, indicating that a campus’ design does not need to be tailored to certain user groups but can be effective for all. The pattern of successful locations is discussed, including the variables in each PC. These PCs provide a framework for practitioners who want to improve their campus’ design to further facilitate unplanned meetings, thus contributing to cooperation between campus users, hopefully leading to further innovation.

The 5-Minute Campus

“…In the focus groups the results from the survey and the previous study in which campus directors indicated the key success factors for unplanned meetings on campuses [31] were confirmed, and the understanding of why these findings occurred were deepened. This approach also yielded additional findings.…”

“…The authors conducted a related survey of 443 academic staff members on three Dutch university campuses [31]. To ensure that interrelationships could be discussed and in-depth reasons could surface [32], a qualitative approach in the form of a focus group was chosen to better understand why respondents would choose one location over another.…”

“…The focus group sessions took place in June 2021. As the statistical analyses of the survey results showed that there were no significant differences between the three different participating campuses, and respondents from one campus gave similar responses to those from the other campuses [31], only participants from the Zernike campus in Groningen were included in the focus groups. Moreover, this campus had the most respondents that indicated willingness to participate in the follow-up research, as well as being the lead author's own campus, creating the opportunity to include campus management and the local business association in recruiting participants from companies.…”

“…This approach also yielded additional findings. Table 2 shows an overview with the main findings from the survey study (for full survey results please see [31]), related focus group questions (phrased specifically to induce discussion), and additional findings (within protocol, but stemming from participants' questions and possibly beyond scope). It is, therefore, an exemplary overview of these findings.…”

“…This paper uses as its point of departure the survey data of a previous paper by the authors [31]. In this related survey study, academic staff of three Dutch university campuses was asked to indicate locations on a map of their campus, where they originally met people from companies who later became partners.…”