Using the Fuzzy Delphi Method to Study the Construction Needs of an Elementary Campus and Achieve Sustainability

One of the crucial concerns for achieving a campus’s sustainable development is that the school buildings should meet the needs of students and teachers. The design of school buildings should not only facilitate teaching activities but also provide a teaching environment that stimulates or encourages autonomous learning in students. School buildings are the site of classroom instruction and also serve as a teaching tool that helps in achieving educational objectives and providing compulsory education. They must consider modern ideas before construction, since education is constantly reformed and updated using new policies. Elementary school teachers and students are the most frequent users of school buildings, and their needs must be prioritized vis-à-vis elementary school building construction. We invited a total of 29 scholars, experts, and school managers to help create questionnaires to assess user level of need for each item of school building design, employing the fuzzy Delphi method. Questionnaires were divided into four major dimensions, namely campus buildings, campus environment, athletic fields, and auxiliary facilities, and the dimensions were composed of 33 items. The targets of the survey were teachers and students at a school located in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan. The results suggest that teachers and students both most highly value improved athletic fields; in particular, an indoor stadium was the most highly desired construction project. For safety reasons, replacing school walls with dwarf hedges was the least desirable item among teachers and students. Our objective was to provide a school building design reference for school administrative authorities and architects.