From space to place: A Visual Grounded Theory analysis of how college students shape study environments

Study environments shape students’ academic engagement and self-regulation, yet informal, self-selected spaces remain underexplored. This exploratory study used Visual Grounded Theory (VGT) to analyze 1418 photographs submitted by 446 undergraduate students at a large Midwestern university in the United States. Guided by Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT), we employed iterative coding, researcher reflexivity, and delayed theoretical integration to inductively identify key physical, technological, and psychosocial features of students’ study environments. We then drew on symbolic interactionism and affordance theory to interpret how students personalized, regulated, and adapted their study spaces over time. Findings identify six emergent themes: (1) stability and constraints in designated study areas, (2) environmental regulation strategies, (3) technological affordances, (4) personalization as an emotional anchor, (5) adaptability in alternative spaces, and (6) temporal adaptation across the semester. Methodologically, we introduce comparative captioning as an original interpretive strategy for synthesizing visual and contextual data within a grounded theory framework. These insights extend research on situated cognition and self-regulated learning by illustrating how material features and symbolic meaning-making jointly shape academic behavior. Practical implications are offered for educators, space designers, and students seeking to optimize study environments through greater flexibility, personalization, and functional alignment with academic demands.