Student learning and work opportunities

For several semesters, we have been involved in the "Intelligent Learning Space Management" project for student learning and working spaces. In recent years, it has become increasingly crowded for us students at the university. The question arose: how can we create more space for learning?

Building learning spaces is very expensive, takes a long time and only resolves the shortage of a small part of the university. Therefore, our idea was: let's first make proper use of all the possibilities we have. Many rooms are rarely used because no one knows them or they are so far away from the rest of the respective department that, as a student, you only go there if you know that this room is free at the moment.

But how do I know if a room is free at the moment? TUMonline is already able to search for free rooms, but it only refers to room occupancy data of seminars etc.. But when the room is indicated as "free" in TUMonline, it can be used by students as a study room. But how do I know if the room is already occupied? We have two possibilities:

1.     An automatic counter in the door, which "monitors" the passage and provides the data available for TUMonline. As a result, you can check if the room has enough capacity to be used by other students

2.      A touchscreen installed in the room, the students themselves enter whether the room is fully occupied

But which one is better?

Current status of the project

In the meantime, the StudiTUM houses of the campus in the city center and Garching as well as the study rooms above the Mathematics / Informatics Library, some conference and seminar rooms are equipped with touchscreens. Therefore they are part of IRIS. Students can inform themselves at

https://www.devapp.it.tum.de/iris/app/

which rooms are occupied at the moment and which rooms are available to use.

But the project is not finished yet. The aim is to integrate many other rooms to IRIS. If the feedback will remain positive, there will be an extension to other houses and locations / campuses.

Pilot project in Garching-Hochbrück

Together with Dr. Kredler (Special Representative of the President for Degree Program Administration) and Andreas Bernhofer (IT Service Center) we tested both possibilities at the Parkring 35 in Garching-Hochbrück. The financial support was provided by the university. The counting machines were sadly measuring inaccurate. In our context, this means that we cannot be sure whether a room is currently free or occupied despite of the sensors. The touchscreens, as part of the project, collected more reliable data. That is why touchscreens were chosen for the expansion of the project to the Garching Campus.

Further Information

At the TUM homepage you will find further information about the study rooms as well as at blog.lehren.tum.de.