Group Members: Karnpreet Bains, Jonas Bal-Freibu, Maryam Mohamed, Heejae Jung, Davendra Sawh, Xi Wang
Many students find it difficult to find a suitable place to study at school. The library, which is the primary study venue, is sometimes so crowded that it is hard to find a satisfactory seat. Consequently, students have often had to seek out other public spaces, such as hallways and lobbies, that are unsuitable for studying.
Studying in noisy areas is distracting, making it difficult to concentrate. Instead of having a quiet place to study, students have to sit in busy hallways or loud cafeterias and put on headphones just to focus. This problem becomes even more persistent during finals week when everyone is trying to get the librarian’s help, making the only study space on campus overcrowded. The issue of not having a quiet place to study is important because it impacts students’ productivity and stress levels. Fixing this problem would hopefully result in less overall stress and increased productivity.
The solution criteria for the Small Wins group project is that it must be the achievement of a goal or task consistent with the definition of a group from our text. That is, the project includes three or more persons interacting who both influence and are influenced by one another. (Rothwell, 2019, p. 24). The Small Wins project must include a community service component, with our group determining what is both our “community” and who is being “served.” However, the project must have an actionable activity that is conducted by all the members. Further, the project must be accomplished within the provided timeline of four weeks, along with the required documentation and support as described in the assignment. Lastly, the project needs to be consistent with Green River College’s guidelines for the safety and security of students during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our group discussed several possible solutions to the problem of overcrowding in the library and the lack of quiet study spaces on campus. One is to extend the library hours so students would have more time to study there. Another idea was using empty classrooms as quiet study spaces during busy times. The final idea our group discussed was utilizing less-used study areas on campus. The examples include the writing & reading center, SC silence study room, 3rd floor of SH, TT building, and computer lab in TC.
The solution of utilizing underused study areas met the solution criteria as it was simple enough to implement within the four-week time frame, it follows the safety guidelines of Green River College, and it serves the community of GRC with its small win of accessing more study spaces. The solution is very cost-effective, with its flyers used for notification to the students, and requires few resources. The vacant spaces we found are, as we discovered, are vacant, so it would be of no inconvenience for the college to use those spaces for studying. It is a matter of bringing the awareness of these spaces to the students, a minimal task.
To begin implementation, each group member contributed by researching potential locations and helping design information about these spaces. The group worked together to place signs and spread awareness so students would know they could use the areas we mentioned above as study areas. Our timeline included researching the problem and solution during the first week, identifying available and underutilized spaces during the second week, creating and sharing information materials during the third week, and executing the project during the fourth week. For our small win project, we are putting up flyers around campus to inform the students about underutilized areas to study. This project helped provide students with additional quiet study options and aimed to reduce overcrowding in the library during busy times.
So, to wrap things up, our project showed that the problem of finding quiet study spaces on campus can be efficiently solved. Overcrowded study spaces are a real challenge during busy times like finals. We saw that the library can get way too crowded, and hallways or cafeterias just aren’t good options. By promoting underutilized study spaces, we could give students more options. Overall, it was a simple but effective solution that really made a difference for our campus community.
Getahun, Hanna. (2021) “The race for space: How today’s crowded study environments could affect college students’ performance.” Call Matters.
Hall, K. (2015). Student use of academic library study space. Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, 10(1).
Rothwell, J.D. (2019). In mixed company: Communicating in small groups and teams (10th ed.). Oxford University Press.
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