Can you Hear Me? Classroom Acoustics Improve Learning

School Acoustics

The acoustics of a school are an often overlooked, but vitally important aspect of school design. A large portion of communication between teacher and student is done verbally. Recent studies have shown that inappropriate levels of reverberation and/or background noise negatively affect a student's ability to learn and can cause lifelong auditory perception problems for the student. Because of this, a proper understanding of how to minimize reverberation and background noise is crucial to the maximizing a classroom's efficiency.

A simple way for architects to minimize reverberation is to use more sound-absorbing materials. This entails using less of the hard, smooth surfaces that dominate current classrooms and replacing them with new materials that are specifically designed to minimize reverberation. Something as small as designing a classroom with sound-absorbing materials can make a huge difference in the learning of the students.

Another way to decrease unwanted noise in a classroom is by separating sound-sensitive areas such as classrooms and offices from areas that are generally noisy such as gymnasiums and playgrounds. This can be simple as designing the school to have a hallway in between the two areas to act as a noise buffer.

Acoustics play a massive role in the practical functionality of a school. At McAllister and Associates strive to design school buildings that best help students learn and minimizing reverberations and background noise is one of the ways we address this issue.