Benefits of Campus Open Spaces in Higher Educational Institutes

By : Nupur Chichkhede, Abhijit Natu

Page No: 101-118

Abstract
Campus open spaces play a vital role in providing good environment quality to the educational campuses. The natural green spaces and a relaxed atmosphere in open spaces encourage outdoor study discussions, meetings, and innovative learning. Well-designed campus landscapes can be effective to address challenges in the context of climate change. An online questionnaire was prepared and sent to the teaching and non-teaching staff of four colleges of an educational campus. Five types of services were identified from literature viz. Provisioning Services, Regulating Services, Socio-cultural Services, Information Services and Economic Services. Questionnaire contained closed ended questions on a “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” Scale of 1 to 5 Likert type scale was used, asking the respondents on whether the landscape of the campus helped in rendering the landscape service. The Factor Analysis was performed to identify the important services offered by landscape. The research findings suggested that the learning benefits were maximally received from the open spaces, followed by social benefits. These were found to be associated with the landscape characteristics of the open spaces. The hypothesis that the landscape services depend upon the landscape characteristics of the open spaces is tested in this single case study, however a large number of campuses need to be studied for generalisation.

Authors :
Nupur Chichkhede : Ph. D. Scholar, Savitribai Phule Pune, University, Pune, Maharashtra, India.
Abhijit Natu : Associate Professor, BKPS College of Architecture, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, Maharashtra, India.