Classroom Design

Studies on classroom design, most especially in Nigerian secondary schools, are seriously lacking. With particular focus on selected teachers in Ogun State, this ex-post facto research examined classroom design and its influence on teachers’ performance in teaching job. A total of 128 participants were randomly selected from 16 secondary schools in Ijebu Ode and 128 questionnaires titled ‘Scale on Classroom Design and Teachers Performance’ (SCDTP) with reliability co-efficient of 0.82 obtained through cronbach alpha method was developed and administered on the target participants. 96 instruments, constituting 75% of the total administered, were however returned and analysed. Simple percentage and Chi-square inferential statistics utilising 0.05 level of significance was adopted in testing the hypotheses. The study revealed a significant positive relationship between classroom design and teachers’ job satisfaction, job performance, teaching and learning outcome. The study concludes t...

Today’s children are growing up in a fast-paced and sometimes chaotic world (Bowes, Grace, & Hodge, 2012). Technology, media, screen time, nature-deficit disorder, fast-paced days, constant visual and physical stimulation, and complicated lives take its toll on children. The classroom is no exception. Oftentimes, children’s complex worlds overflow into the classroom resulting in a myriad of issues such as inappropriate behaviors, inability to focus, inadequate communication skills, and a lack of self-regulation. There is little room for calm and yet a significant body of research indicates children do not thrive in chaotic learning environments (Fisher, Goodwin, & Sellman, 2014). With all this in mind, it becomes evident that early childhood educators need to look beyond the tradition of functionality and begin to develop strategies for bringing calm into the classroom design.

The Brain-SET framework is one solution for bringing calm into the classroom. This framework aligns classroom design with the child’s brain and is based on the three developmental levels of the brain: Survival, Emotion, and Thinking or SET.  These levels of the brain need to align and work in harmony with the design of the classroom in order for young children to thrive. The Brain-SET framework incorporates three different design elements, which are critical for shaping children’s learning experiences: (1) Design for Learning; (2) Feelings for Learning; and, (3) Spaces for Learning.

Today’s children are growing up in a fast-paced and sometimes chaotic world (Bowes, Grace, & Hodge, 2012). Technology, media, screen time, nature-deficit disorder, fast-paced days, constant visual and physical stimulation, and complicated lives take its toll on children. The classroom is no exception. Oftentimes, children’s complex worlds overflow into the classroom resulting in a myriad of issues such as inappropriate behaviors, inability to focus, inadequate communication skills, and a lack of self-regulation. There is little room for calm and yet a significant body of research indicates children do not thrive in chaotic learning environments (Fisher, Goodwin, & Sellman, 2014). With all this in mind, it becomes evident that early childhood educators need to look beyond the tradition of functionality and begin to develop strategies for bringing calm into the classroom design.

The Brain-SET framework is one solution for bringing calm into the classroom. This framework aligns classroom design with the child’s brain and is based on the three developmental levels of the brain: Survival, Emotion, and Thinking or SET.  These levels of the brain need to align and work in harmony with the design of the classroom in order for young children to thrive. The Brain-SET framework incorporates three different design elements, which are critical for shaping children’s learning experiences: (1) Design for Learning; (2) Feelings for Learning; and, (3) Spaces for Learning.

This paper provides an overview of the results of a project that explores strategies for improving the thermal performance of the New South Wales Demountable Classroom in the diverse climates that occur across New South Wales, Australia. The climates in NSW vary between cool or mild temperate climates, sub tropical climates and hot dry desert climates. The demountable classroom is expected to provide comfortable teaching spaces in any of these climates. The NSW Demountable Classroom was designed 50 years ago and accounts for 12% of all government classrooms across the state. The thermal performance of existing classrooms is poor. The project uses a design led methodology to develop strategies that can be implemented by community groups to improve the performance of individual classrooms in particular locations. The strategies are evaluated using a computer simulation model. Predicted thermal comfort and annual energy consumption are used as the benchmarks for performance. The results illustrate that there are multiple strategies and combinations of strategies for improving the thermal performance of lightweight buildings in all of the diverse climates of NSW and Australia. The results also demonstrate that some of the orthodox conventions of bio-climatic design need more thorough interrogation.

More than half of all humanity live in urban centres, and people generally spend 80% of time indoors. This means that people are spending less time outside and in places that can be considered 'nature'. This is problematic, because quantitative and qualitative research shows that isolation from the natural world negatively affects human wellbeing and cognitive performance, suggesting that it is essential that nature is a constant part of humans' lives. This 'nature deficit' also impacts the development of personal bonds with nature which relates to learning to value and protect nature, and particularly affects young children. As children grow up in environments increasingly removed from nature, how will children form personal bonds with the living world if they spend their key developmental years removed from it? To address this question, this primarily design-led research focuses on primary school learning environment design and explores how spatial design can encourage a connection between child and nature. This paper discusses the results of a pilot study workshop held with children aged 5-7 exploring their preferences and opinions about nature, learning environments and play. These results are discussed in relation to how they could be applied to learning environment design to create a space which appeals directly to young children and encourages them to experience and interact with nature. Sustainability, particularly in the realm of built environment design, and within a 'strong model' of sustainability, can be understood as being made up of nested interrelationships between ecology and climate; a sense of social wellbeing within wider ecological settings; and economic issues contained within a social sphere. This paper concludes that biophilic design focused on the psychological wellbeing and development of children can add to both social sustainability agendas, as well as the wider aspects of ecological sustainability.

The environmental setting has a direct impact on perception, comfort, motivation, and concentration in learning environments. Accordingly, in computer classrooms, technological equipment and classroom settings can enhance psychological comfort and the learning environment. With this in mind, seemingly subtle differences in interior design/layout, as opposed to the larger matters of architectural design and floor-plan, were assumed to influence the perceptual performance of design students. To verify this hypothesis, the atmospheric attributes of two computer classrooms used to teach 3Dmax and AutoCAD drawing programs at the Department of Furniture and Decoration of Technical Education Faculty at Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey, were tested by eliciting responses to ten bipolar semantic differential items on a Likert-style scale. Results showed that differences in the environmental settings of each classroom had an important influence on the perceptual evaluations of students. Factors such as proximity/distance of pieces of equipment to one another, roominess/crowdedness in terms of the placement of the PC boxes, the presence of paintings and plants, and attention to circulation and sightlines, were observed to have an effect on whether student participants perceived a space positively or negatively. These results imply that preparing an optimal environment would encourage a good relationship between the student and his or her environment, thereby encouraging more productive learning and better motivation and concentration.

Eğitim kurumsal olarak ilkokulla başlamaktadır. Okula başladıktan sonra çocuklar, zamanlarının çok büyük bir çoğunluğunu okulda geçirmektedir. Bu anlamda ilkokullarda çocukların motivasyonu, verimliliği, fiziksel ve bilişsel gelişimi için okulların fiziksel koşulları büyük öneme sahiptir. İlkokullardaki derslikler farklı içerikli derslerin işlendiği mekânlardır. Bu yüzden ilkokullardaki dersliklerde grup çalışmaları, etkinlikler, sunu, gösteri, deneysel faaliyetler için farklı eylem alanları oluşturulması gerekmektedir. Ülkemizde 2005-2006 yılından itibaren eğitim programları yapılandırmacı eğitim felsefesine bağlı olarak düzenlenmektedir. Bu anlamda yapılandırmacı eğitim felsefesine bağlı olarak eğitim programının gerektirdiği derslik koşullarının sağlanması gerekmektedir. Böylelikle dersliklerde, yapılandırmacı eğitim felsefesine uygun mekânsal düzenlemeler sağlanmaktadır. Yapılandırmacı eğitim felsefesinin ilkokullardaki dersliklere yansıması, optimum sınıf mevcudu, kullanılacak donatıların çeşitliliği/niteliği ve çeşitli faaliyetler için etkinlik köşeleri yapılması gibi koşulların düzenlenmesiyle sağlanmaktadır. Bu çalışma kapsamında, ilkokullardaki dersliklerin yapılandırmacı eğitim felsefesine uygunluğu değerlendirilmektedir. Ayrıca dersliklerdeki mekânsal organizasyonun yapılandırmacı eğitim felsefesine göre düzenlenmesine yönelik önerilerde bulunulmaktadır. Çalışma alanı olarak Rize ili Merkez ilçesindeki 3 ilkokul seçilmiştir. Bu okullardaki toplam 24 derslikte yerinde tespit çalışmaları ve bu dersliklerin sınıf öğretmenleri ile görüşmeler yapılmıştır. Yerinde tespit ve görüşmelerden elde edilen veriler SPSS programına girilerek tablolaştırılmıştır.

6-10 yaş grubu çocuklar, ilkokullarda zamanlarının büyük bir bölümünü okul sıralarında ders dinleyerek geçirmektedir. Bu dönem çocukların fiziksel gelişimleri açısından önemli bir dönem olup, çalışma birimlerinin öğrencilerin boyutsal ve biyomekanik özelliklerine uygun olması önemlidir. Öğrencilerin antropometrik boyutlarına uygun olmayan çalışma birimleri, öğrencilerin fiziksel gelişimini, öğrenme verimliliğini ve konforunu olumsuz yönde etkilemektedir. Ayrıca boyun, sırt, kol kaslarında, omurilikte, dolaşım ve solunum sisteminde rahatsızlıklara sebebiyet vermektedir. Bu çalışmanın amacı, ilkokullardaki dersliklerde kullanılan çalışma birimlerinin öğrencilerin antropometrik boyutlarına uygunluğunun önemini vurgulayarak çalışma birimlerinin boyutlarına ilişkin öneriler sunmaktır. Çalışma kapsamında, Rize ili Merkez ilçesindeki 3 ilkokuldan toplam 24 derslikte yapılan yerinde tespit çalışmasında çalışma birimleri ölçülerek fotoğraflanmıştır. Bu tespitlerle elde edilen bulgular; Hastürk’ün 2006 yılında yapmış olduğu “Ankara İlinde Bulunan 7 – 12 Yaş Arası Çocuklarda Antropometrik Değerlerin Belirlenmesi ve Bu Ölçülerin Çocuk Odası Mobilyasına Uygulanması” isimli yüksek lisans çalışmasında elde ettiği veriler ve Pheasant’ın 2003 yılında basılmış “Bodyspace: Anthropometry, Ergonomics and the Design of Work” isimli kitabındaki verilere bağlı olarak değerlendirilmiştir. Çalışmanın sonucunda; öğrencilerin antropometrik boyutları-çalışma birimi boyutları ilişkisi bağlamında yapılan değerlendirmeler ışığında ilkokullardaki dersliklerin çalışma birimlerinin, ölçüleri için öneriler sunulmuştur.

In the fall of 2015, students in the Sociology/Anthropology 371 course conducted research on formal and informal learning spaces at St. Olaf College; our section focused on formal spaces. We conducted an anonymous online survey through St. Olaf Form Creator with a sample size of 750 students. Our response rate was 38% (285 respondents). Our team's research focused on three variables associated with acoustics and lighting in the classroom: student satisfaction, student distraction, and student preference. We investigated two research questions: 1. How satisfied are students with the acoustics in their classrooms and what aspects of acoustics do students find distracting? 2. What type of lighting do students prefer for specific activities in formal learning spaces (e.g. for lectures, group discussions, exams, presentations, movies, etc.)? The most important results are: ● While most students are satisfied with acoustics, one in five students is distracted by some sort of noise during class. ● Classroom speaker and microphone technologies should be as user-friendly as possible to minimize instructor error. ● Classroom design should incorporate acoustic isolation strategies to minimize both exterior and interior noise. ● Students indicated that their acoustic satisfaction hinges on the consistent elimination of distractions through sound insulation as well as technological consistency. ● Students generally prefer natural lighting, but a combination of both natural and artificial is ideal. ● Classroom design should include controls for all lighting elements. ● Installing light fixtures on walls rather than hanging from ceilings in order to make bulbs more accessible can help eliminate two common problems: flickering lights and dead bugs stuck inside light fixtures. Based on our research, we offer three recommendations: 1. Incorporate acoustic insulation strategies to minimize both exterior and interior noise. 2. Design classrooms with both windows and electrical lighting.  Incorporate controls to make a combination of natural and artificial light easy to control and flexible to change between. 3. Design classroom lighting to be able to accommodate a variety of classroom activities by incorporating lighting control that can turn off specific lights rather than all lights or no lights.

This study investigated the influence of physical and virtual learning spaces on interactive learning in a college and university setting. Qualitative analysis of an undergraduate liberal arts program that employs the use of roundtable classrooms was conducted. Interview and focus group data from students and faculty, along with classroom observations, resulted in the finding that the roundtable classroom encouraged interactive learning, face-to-face accountability, and verbal immediacy, along with a " cohort effect " and " fidget factor. " Virtual learning spaces influenced interactive learning, and their effectiveness was heavily moderated by instructors and by the frequency and use of educational technology. Recommendations and suggestions for future research are provided.

Schools as designed spaces leave a lot to be desired in terms of place-making. Schools are often institutional settings that are more similar to prisons (in terms of their design and their effect on their users) than most educators might want to admit. It’s the purpose of this paper to briefly explore the problems with school design and to propose some possible solutions by way of sharing visual examples of outstanding design elements and public spaces.

In addition to their pedagogical benefits, active learning classrooms
constitute an important topic of research and have renewed debates
on the impact of the built environment on education. However, this
literature sometimes overlooks the experiences of learners by focusing on the design and practice of teaching in active learning classrooms. The article focuses on learners and asks a question through
the reflective style of the Renaissance essay: ‘should we prepare
students for active learning classrooms?’

A community led retrofitting strategy involves the use of a design methodology to improve thermal performance that can be implemented by the community. This is a bottom up approach where designers work with children, parents and teachers to effect change in their built environments. Broken Hill provides an example of a remote community that represents the challenges of building and living in rural Australia in an extreme climate that is hot and dry. Whilst there are many strategies that can be used to improve the performance of the buildings, the practical passive strategies of insulation, fly roof and thermal mass using fibre cement sheeting where selected. Computer simulation is used to model these strategies and they found to halve the energy consumption of the building, however the energy consumption still exceeds the current target for this type of building.

Humans spend an enormous amount of time in built environments. In 2001, the National Human Activity Pattern Survey revealed that humans spend an average of 86.9% of their times indoors.  This trend extends well beyond adults and includes young children. The 2019 Digest of Educational Statistics reported children under the age of 5 spend an average of 30 hour a week in the built environment called a classroom.  With so much time spend in classrooms and given the impact of COVID-19 on children's emotional development, it becomes critically important to develop design strategies for bringing calm into the classroom. The Brain-SET framework is one solution for bringing calm into the classroom. The framework aligns classroom design with the child's brain and is based on the three developmental levels of the brain: Survival, Emotional, and Thinking. In order for children to thrive, these levels of the brain need to align and work in harmony with the design of the classroom. The Brain-SET formula incorporates three different design elements, which are critical for shaping children's learning experiences: (1) Design for Learnings; (2) Feelings for Learning; and, (3) Spaces for learning.

A vision can be complicated by the reality of details. Auburn University is planning new classroom buildings with a number of active and flexible classrooms. A pilot room, built in the summer of 2013, is teaching us lessons in design that help shape the new buildings, sometimes in small but meaningful ways.

The interaction between people and built environment has been examined in the field of architectural psychology since the 1960s. In this field, “spaciousness” has been one of the most significant concepts which have been frequently reported in the semantic differential scales, such as Spaciousness-Crampedness Scale (S-C-S) developed by İmamoğlu (1975) and used in several experimental studies via real rooms and scale models in 1970s and 1980s. However, there are still crucial architectural dimensions which have not been studied yet. The main aim of this thesis is to assess spaciousness factors in buildings via S-C-S, and within this framework, the second aim is to test the reliability of computer simulations as current research tools in architectural psychology research. This thesis is composed of a preliminary study and two groups of experimental studies (each group consisting of four consecutive experiments). In literature survey, the last 45 years of architectural psychology was reviewed, and as a developing research tool, computer simulations were examined with their current and potential features. The first group of experiments was conducted through computer simulations to develop a procedure for the second group, which aimed to test the effects of permanent components of rooms on spaciousness. Ceiling height, types of ceiling and floor (flat and stepped), and plan geometry (rectangular and trapezoidal) were assumed to have an effect on spaciousness (appeal, planning, and space freedom). 350 participants, composed of both students and staff at METU, participated in the experiments. Sample spaces were selected from METU classrooms, and their detailed computer simulations and derivatives were used as stimuli. The results of the experiments indicated that higher ceiling made the room more spacious. The types of ceiling did not affect spaciousness in general. Flat ceiling indicated higher levels of space freedom compared to stepped ceiling. Classrooms with stepped floors were evaluated as better planned than those with flat floors. Plan geometry did not affect participants’ evaluations of spaciousness significantly. Results of the experiments demonstrate that the effects of some components of rooms on spaciousness can be identified via computer simulations.

This paper provides an overview of the results of a project that explores strategies for improving the thermal performance of the New South Wales Demountable Classroom in the diverse climates that occur across New South Wales, Australia. The climates in NSW vary between cool or mild temperate climates, sub tropical climates and hot dry desert climates. The demountable classroom is expected to provide comfortable teaching spaces in any of these climates. The NSW Demountable Classroom was designed 50 years ago and accounts for 12% of all government classrooms across the state. The thermal performance of existing classrooms is poor. The project uses a design led methodology to develop strategies that can be implemented by community groups to improve the performance of individual classrooms in particular locations. The strategies are evaluated using a computer simulation model. Predicted thermal comfort and annual energy consumption are used as the benchmarks for performance. The result...

Natural ventilation solutions can provide sufficient outside air to maintain adequate indoor air quality (IAQ), which can improve occupants’ performance in classrooms and provide reductions in energy consumption for space conditioning. In this study, the effect of cool outside air and the vent opening configurations on IAQ and occupant thermal comfort in naturally ventilated classrooms during the heating season was examined. Dynamic and steady state computer simulations were performed to investigate the internal conditions of a naturally ventilated classroom, designed to meet the requirements of the Priority Schools Building Programme (PSBP) Output Specification. The modelled designs considered natural cross ventilation airflow through high-level top hung-out or bottom hung-in openings, and a stack (atrium). Dynamic thermal modelling results indicate that adequate IAQ and occupant thermal comfort could be achieved using natural ventilation. However, the CFD simulation results predic...

With growing knowledge about the effectiveness of collaborative or team-based learning in developing important skill sets among students, the development of collaborative and active learning space (CALS) classrooms has gained increasing momentum in recent years. However, there currently exists a paucity of research evaluating the impact of these CALS projects, especially from the perspective of the staff within the institutions that implement them. In view of this gap, this study, using secondary data, reports an institutional evaluation of a CALS project from the teachers' perspectives. Both quantitative and qualitative results suggest that overall, the CALS project was positively viewed by the teachers. Nonetheless, challenges were also revealed such as classroom settings, digital infrastructure, and technical support. The findings suggest that instead of viewing digital technology as a panacea, the implementation of a CALS project should be regarded as a systematic project, which involves stakeholders across an educational institution, including administrative staff, teaching staff, support staff, and students.