Abstract
Universities are at the front line of promoting sustainability. The wellbeing of its students plays a key role in advancing such agendas. In the past decade, many university classrooms have been equipped with a projector; however, the lighting design of the classroom remains unchanged. This paper presents a visual comfort study of modern university classrooms by considering three working surfaces: the student’s desk, whiteboard, and projector screen. The study cross-examines the quality of the classroom lighting by high dynamic range image (HDRi) photography and the students’ well-being from user satisfaction surveys. Comparisons are organized based on the seating area of the student, the type of learning (text-based or image-based) in the classroom, and the lighting scene with and without a projector in use. The spot illuminance, luminance, HDRi spatial luminance distribution and the Unified Glare Rating (UGR) are the parameters used to describe lighting quality. This paper found that more than 70% of the respondents experienced some adverse physical symptoms, and nearly 50% felt that the lighting condition was not ideal for task performance. UGR indicated the presence of minor glare problems in whiteboard-based teaching scenarios, and daylight was too strong to be utilized. The results suggest that the lighting design needs to involve a luminance distribution minded approach for the students’ wellbeing in classroom learning.
Highlights
Classrooms play an important role in human society
Studies have found that lighting design can have an immediate effect on students’ visual comfort [5,6]
The scenarios for the lighting condition analysis include the following: 1) Visual comfort level of the user at different seating locations; 2) Different media being used in a classroom; 3) different content of the classroom’s material; and 4) A comparison between the glare metrics and actual comfort survey
Summary
Classrooms play an important role in human society. Students sit for up to 70% of a school day [1] and spend significantly more time in a classroom than not in a classroom. Due to the need to receive information during lecture sessions, users need to constantly switch among these three surfaces; a static glare measurement may not be suitable in this case These activities are carried out at the same time. Survey questionnaires should include the influences of lighting condition on the physiological symptoms, brightness perceptions and task performance of the users [13]. The scenarios for the lighting condition analysis include the following: 1) Visual comfort level of the user at different seating locations; 2) Different media being used in a classroom (projector and whiteboard); 3) different content of the classroom’s material (text-based and image-based); and 4) A comparison between the glare metrics and actual comfort survey. This paper summarizes the issues of current classroom lighting design and possible economically minded remedies
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