Eliminating acoustical barriers to learning in classrooms—Case study of reverberation reduction in elementary school gymnasiums

Abstract

A gymnasium can be a highly reverberant space. This is a consequence of the large room volume coupled with an abundance of hard surfaces. School designers frequently overlook the need for reverberation control in gymnasiums, cafeterias, and other large school rooms. The high level of reverberation promotes a high noise level and interferes with speech intelligibility, degrading the primary functions of those spaces. Moreover, those rooms are often used for additional functions, such as student assemblies, community meetings, and school performances, which will also suffer from excess reverberation. A case study is presented for two elementary school gymnasiums, each with mid-frequency reverberation times of about 5 s. Renovation treatments to control reverberation were developed using simple computer models. Significant reductions in reverberation and noise level were achieved. As a result, student manageability was improved, and teacher sanity was restored.