A systematic approach to quantify the influence of indoor environmental parameters on students' perceptions, responses, and short‐term academic performance

Abstract

This study explores how to measure the influence of the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) parameters on students and their academic performance. It is the primary responsibility of the school management to provide appropriate classrooms for education; which can positively influence students' academic performance, contributing to a sustainable and positive school climate. 1 As part of classrooms' environmental quality, this study focusses on four IEQ parameters: (1) indoor air quality, (2) thermal conditions, (3) acoustic

Positive effects of indoor environmental conditions on students and their performance in higher education classrooms: A between-groups experiment

“…In our experiment, students did not notice the reduction of reverberation time and in the control condition students did not underperform on cognitive performance and short-term academic performance, indicating that base line conditions at a reverberation time of 0.6 s were met in the control condition. Furthermore, although previous work revealed a relation between students' perceived cognitive performance and content-related test scores (Brink et al, 2022), the presented results in Sections 3.4.1, 3.4.2, and 3.4.3 do not confirm this relation.…”

“…A previously developed method was used to examine students' perceptions, responses, and short-term academic performance (Brink et al, 2022). To determine the effect of reverberation time on students' perceived acoustic comfort, the related item score to the speech intelligibility was used (Castro-Martínez et al, 2016).…”

Understanding how indoor environmental classroom conditions influence academic performance in higher education

“…Figure 2 shows the analyzed sub-categories, related aspects and their mutual relations derived from a previously reported framework that guided the data analysis (Brink et al, 2022). Both direct and indirect relationship (see Figure 2) between sub-categories were analyzed.…”

“…One of the authors moderated the interview with a guide; another author attended the interview and asked additional questions if deemed necessary. Figure 2 presents the discussed categories, sub-categories, the related aspects and their mutual relations, which originate from a previous study (Brink et al , 2022).…”

“…A previously developed framework is used to identify relationships between lecturers’ and students’ perceived IEQ conditions, internal responses and short-term academic performance (Brink et al , 2022). The IEQ-related aspects identified in that framework were used to explore and study in depth how and why lecturers and students respond to different IEQ conditions and how these conditions may influence in-class activities, i.e.…”