ACOUSTIC RESEARCH SCHOOL

Acoustics measurements were done in three classrooms of the Vitalis College in Breda. The students of the tree classrooms participated in a questionnaire. The aim of the study was to determine if the three classrooms, in terms of acoustics and lighting, meet the requirements and to determine which room is perceived best by students and teacher.

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The core of teaching is bringing a message from teacher to students. The reverberation time and the speech intelligibility are the most important values to determine the acoustics of a classroom. The acoustic measurements show that classroom that performs best is not the classroom that students perceived best. A possible explanation is that just before the measurement absorbing panels were placed in the better classroom. This allows the reverberation time to decrease significantly and to enlarge the difference in sound between the front and the back of the room. The students aren't used to this and therefore evaluated this classroom worse.