Can Classrooms Have an Impact on Student Stress?

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Stress negatively impacts a person’s health, and stress in the school environment may negatively impact student performance. For the past five years, the graduation rate for undergraduate students has been falling. The main factors contributing to this decline may involve indirect or direct stress on the student. For instance, learning space and environment impact undergraduate students and their stress levels which impacts their graduation rates. We hypothesized that students in the SCALE UP (Students Centered Active Learning Environment for Undergraduate Programs) classroom have lower concentrations of salivary stress biomarkers (cortisol and α‐amylase) than students in traditional classrooms, and perform better academically than their counterparts. We screened students learning introductory biology in two different learning environments, a SCALE UP and a lecture hall, collected salivary samples twice a week, and asked the students to self rate their stress level from not stressed to very stressed. Saliva was collected at the beginning and end of each class period to measure a change in cortisol or α‐ amylase over the class period. We used an Enzyme‐Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) to quantify the concentration of salivary cortisol and a colorimetric method to determine the α‐ amylase. Students in the SCALE UP classroom had lower α‐amylase activity than those in a traditional lecture hall. Cortisol concentrations were not correlated with the classroom environment. The results of the α‐amylase assay aligned closer with the literature, indicating that salivary α‐amylase is better at identifying acute stressors, such as a classroom environment than cortisol. The setup of a SCALE UP class may have less of an impact on student stress than the pedagogy. The results of the study highlight the importance of pedagogy on student stress and the significance of salivary α‐amylase as an acute, noninvasive stress biomarker.Support or Funding InformationThis research was supported by the U.S. Department of Education HIS STEM program (841.031c), Award #P021C160036