On campus interactions – a user survey

With companies locating on university campuses more and more, many universities are designing interactive places where different campus users can meet, such as faculty, company employees, and students. By increasing interaction between these campus users, it is pre-supposed that this will lead to more cooperation and knowledge sharing, resulting in more innovations and knowledge valorisation. A campus’ spaces and services have a significant impact on interaction. These may block or facilitate interaction between different campus users. Adding to the body of knowledge of critical success factors (CSFs) for campus interaction, a survey was distributed under campus users of three Dutch university campuses. Due to Covid-19 restrictions, the survey was distributed online, through the university email addresses of 4.312 campus users. This resulted in 492 responses, identifying 224 location points where meetings between companies and knowledge institutions took place. Respondents were specifically asked to indicate only unplanned meetings, where a connection was made that was beneficial for knowledge sharing. Respondents also indicated what space and service factors were most important in facilitating this meeting (critical success factors).After analysing the results, the indicated locations show that most meetings take place within the respondents’ own buildings, regardless of the indicated quality of the spaces or services. This may be due to time and travel constraints. There are however some buildings that do successfully attract these type of meetings: buildings with a strong theme (e.g. Energy) and company buildings. A regression analysis, conducted in SPSS, also showed that there a no or only very limited differences between different types of campus users, and that general conclusions can be drawn from combining the data of the three different campuses.These critical success factors were compared with those found in the literature and show that there is a match between the CSFs identified by practitioners (Campus facility directors) and campus users. Comparing CSFs from literature, practice and campus users, this study allows for more effective application of CSFs in campus design policies. A framework for future studies on CSFs for interaction on campuses is provided. The study is limited as only campus users from knowledge institutions respondent to the survey, a follow up study with respondents from companies is recommended.