In addition to learning issues, poor soundscapes in educational facilities affect health and mood. Humans associate loud noises with stress, making cortisol levels rise and blood pressure increase. For students already suffering from stressful situations, creating a calming environment can be pivotal.
Trauma Recovery
For many students, school is their safe place: a place where they count on normalcy. During the coronavirus pandemic, students were removed from the routine of school and their social circles, and others lacked access to resources, the internet, and free or reduced-fee lunches.
“Dealing with all of these external things creates mental noise that children need to psychologically process,” Highland says. “Because of COVID-19, many students experienced trauma. Calming one environment in their world can help relieve the parasympathetic nervous system and have huge impacts on their social and emotional wellbeing, as well as their ability to academically achieve.”
Lower sound levels are key to fostering calmness. Quiet spaces help people slow down, calm down and talk softly yet still be heard. Creating acoustics that promote an environment of healing in the classroom can help students—and teachers—work through accumulated trauma.
In response to the pandemic, however, many schools desire large-volume spaces to permit social distancing and airflow, as well as hard surfaces for easy cleaning. But when 60 children are in a large, hard-surfaced area, even a few whispers create loud reverberations.
“We aren’t going to change how we hear and listen; it is a hardwired function after 200,000-plus years of human development,” Younger Nightingale points out. “Instead, we need to change the space to fit us better, so we can be healthy, happy and our best self.”
Sound Solutions
Controlling reverberations is dependent on the size of the room and the amount of hard surfaces reflecting soundwaves back into the space. Different surfaces reflect sound differently, and each absorbs some energy from sounwaves. Acoustically absorptive materials contain small areas where soundwaves become trapped, preventing their re-entry into the room. The amount of absorption depends on the material itself and the frequency of the sound. Creating better acoustics in educational facilities requires changing the ratio between hard surfaces and absorptive surfaces.
In existing educational facilities’ learning spaces, the use of sound meters can provide specific information about noise levels. The addition of high-performing, sound-absorbing applications will reduce reverberations. Sound-absorption treatments should be located close to the source of the sound. Acoustic ceiling tiles or installations that suspend acoustic materials from the ceiling, as well as wall panels or classroom dividers made of absorptive materials, carpet and baffling, are all treatments designed for acoustic comfort in learning environments and public spaces, like cafeterias.
It’s critical to examine the use of the space. For example, at the Oklahoma State University College of Osteopathic Medicine at the Cherokee Nation, noisy simulation suites expose students to environments similar to those they will encounter in real-life hospital settings. Inside the same building, however, students needed high-functioning classrooms and quiet study spaces. Acoustical wall applications provide the solution to dampen the clamor from the simulation suites and improve speech intelligibility in classrooms.
Mitigating environmental factors wherever possible (such as adequately housing HVAC systems) is another smart strategy. In some cases, controlling external spaces may be all that’s needed. At Keller Independent School District’s Florence Elementary School in Southlake, Texas, suspending acoustic baffles from the hallway ceilings helps control noise in adjacent classrooms. Adding acoustical ceiling baffles in large open spaces where many students assemble at one time (such as the cafeteria, library and labs), also helps reduce reverberation and control sound accumulation. This made the spaces more suitable for conversations without creating echo chambers.
For new construction, current classroom design favors open, flexible spaces to accommodate non-traditional learning. Sound-absorbing ceiling treatments and moveable acoustic partitions can help control reverberations in these open floorplans.
“Acoustics is part of a multi-tiered approach,” Highland explains. “As we look at how the classroom environment can support students’ comfort, wellbeing and academic achievement, good acoustics can become one of the unspoken heroes of this equation.”