Another look at the acoustics of open plan schools

Abstract

The open plan school has been with us now for over ten years, and the number of these schools being built per year is still on the increase. However, the acoustical environment of these spaces has received criticism with regard to high noise levels which result in annoyance, distraction, and speech interference. Even though the usage of open plan school spaces is quite different from that of open plan offices, the acoustical design recommendations for schools have generally been based on requirements for open plan offices. It appears that other considerations should be investigated for defining an acoustical environment acceptable for educational purposes. Our work has concentrated primarily on noise levels and annoyance in open plan classrooms. Direct relationships between noise levels, class size, student age level, and room finish treatments have been developed from extensive measured data. The subjective factor of annoyance has also been investigated and is related to background noise level and peak level fluctuations. Further investigations on the effects of room shaping are discussed as are statistical distributions of class noise.