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Explorations Of Acoustic Trends In Data Logged In K-12 Classrooms, Kieren Smith

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Dissertations, Thesis, and Student Research

The classroom environment influences the ability of children to learn. To ascertain the effect of indoor environment parameters on student achievement, a large-scale project was launched, collecting time-logged data from 220 k-12 classrooms in the eastern Nebraska region for six days each. Data were collected from a variety of disciplines, including acoustics, lighting, indoor air quality, and thermal comfort. This thesis focuses on the acoustic parameters, looking first at how overall classroom values--including average sound levels and room reverberation time--influence student achievement. Using structural equation modeling, the average sound level during times with speech present was discovered to have a …