Title : ACOUSTICAL CRITERIA FOR A BETTER LEARNING ENVIRONMENT IN CLASSROOMS
Authors : G. Muthu Shoba Mohan
Publication : February 13-16, 2013
Volume :
Pages : 10-Feb
Price : 250
Abstract : A school classroom fulfils its function only if the students sitting in the class are able to hear and understand what the teacher is speaking. To hear properly the lessons taught by the teacher, the intelligibility in school classrooms should be good enough. In tropical climates with natural ventilation, the intrusion of external noise into the classroom has been found to affect the background noise (BN) in the empty and occupied classrooms. This study is the evaluation of classrooms for young children in India, to assess their acoustical environments for better learning. The schools under consideration are located in an educationally advanced locality in India - a district in the southern part of India, namely Kanyakumari. Situated in a warm -humid climate, the classrooms have open windows and doors with the possibility of noise intrusion from outside. The two important parameters for the intelligibility in classrooms are background noise (BN) and reverberation time (RT). To hear properly the lessons taught by the teacher, the intelligibility in school classrooms should be good enough. In this investigation speech intelligibility parameters were evaluated based on the BN and RT in classrooms. With the BN and RT, using the software CLASS TALK, the speech intelligibility parameters like, Speech intelligibility and Speech Transmission Index in the classrooms is evaluated to assess the acoustical quality of the classrooms. It is found that the speech intelligibility in many of the classrooms located in quiet sites have nearly acceptable levels of speech transmission index, but schools located in noisy and housing sites are in the marginal level of acoustical quality. In the classrooms under study, some cost effective measures to improve the speech intelligibility are suggested. Speech intelligibility was calculated, and improvements in speech intelligibility were verified. Finally, the paper gives some suggestions for schools to ensure better learning environment in classrooms.