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Understanding Student Needs for Allston Planning

The document recommends the following alternatives to a survey to understand customer needs for long-range planning of Allston: 1. Conduct focus groups with students from each school proportionate to enrollment to gather qualitative feedback. 2. Collect data through university application forms to capture information without biases in a more careful manner. 3. Gather data from realtors in the area and predict future demographic preferences, but this is an expensive option. 4. Understand curriculum and the importance of post-classroom student interaction between different schools. 5. Since this is a long-term 10-25 year project, survey results may not reflect changing needs as well as studying other universities to understand modern approaches to

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Anamika Chauhan
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4 views3 pages

Understanding Student Needs for Allston Planning

The document recommends the following alternatives to a survey to understand customer needs for long-range planning of Allston: 1. Conduct focus groups with students from each school proportionate to enrollment to gather qualitative feedback. 2. Collect data through university application forms to capture information without biases in a more careful manner. 3. Gather data from realtors in the area and predict future demographic preferences, but this is an expensive option. 4. Understand curriculum and the importance of post-classroom student interaction between different schools. 5. Since this is a long-term 10-25 year project, survey results may not reflect changing needs as well as studying other universities to understand modern approaches to

Uploaded by

Anamika Chauhan
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

If not a survey, what else would you recommend to understand the customer in a way that

would inform long range planning of Allston?

• Focus groups composed of students from each of the schools or in proportion of the number of
students they have
• Collect data in the university application forms itself since it will help us capture the data without any
prejudices and it will likely be filled more carefully
• Gather data from other sources like realtors in the area and predict the future preferences of the
demographic we are researching on, but a very expensive alternative
• Get an understanding of the curriculum and get an idea how important the student interaction post
classroom is. (Divinity might not need as much interaction as law)
• Since it is a long term project (10-25 years) survey results might not be the best way to understand the
changing needs as they would reflect the current scenario and short term future
• Study universities like MIT which are in the same state and of similar stature and other newly
established universities which are more modern to understand their approaches. (Towards attributes
like parking, laundry, community spaces, commuting etc.,)
What should be kept/removed in the next survey? What could the survey do to
contribute to the Allston initiative ?
• jj Kept Removed

Questions were simple and easy to answer in most All the questions had predefined options to choose
sections. from which left no room for open ended suggestions.

Nicely designed scales for the importance of features Questions that can be gotten with a simple database
for satisfaction rates, importance attributed to search can be removed
facilities, expensiveness, choices, transport

Simple worded and easily answerable questions


about the current housing status, types, rental data,
no. of bedrooms
What could the survey do to contribute to the Allston initiative ?
• Provide strong and relevant data to back future decisions.
• Will help in attracting the new students who are feeling that Harvard’s
living facilities are not on par of other comparable universities.
• The previous survey led to the building of ‘One western Avenue’
which became a successful decision.
• Spend the money on the best and most pressing features that the
students wanted rather than based on the University’s perceived
needs.
• Scalability in the future
• Easy analysis and visualisation of the current trends.

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