Undergraduate Research

Classroom Design and Student Motivation

I presented this study at the Auburn University Student Research Symposium in 2015. I was advised by a member of the Interior Design faculty, Dr. Melanie Duffey, to design and carry out this survey.

Abstract

Numerous studies and polls in the last several years have shown that the United States is falling behind other industrialized nations in terms of the number of students completing school and the quality of the education they are receiving. Speculation varies as to the cause; some blame poor teachers and the lack of talent from which teachers are drawn, some blame the focus on standardized testing as inefficient and useless, some blame cultural inequalities, and still others blame parents for not placing proper emphasis on the importance of education. The focus, however, is rarely on the design of the learning environments themselves – classrooms, of all shapes and forms. In particular, this study will examine the effect of classroom configuration and design on students’ motivation during instruction time. Assuming there is an effect, learning its extent can aid designers and school builders in creating the best learning environments possible to procure the highest level of motivation from students. Taking one variable out of the complex equation that results in a quality education is sure to help pinpoint what exactly needs to happen to bring the United States back to the top of the education rankings.

methods

The survey was carried out via a web-based survey through Survey Monkey. The survey had a sample size of N=19, comprised of two interior design studios at two different times of the day. Each was assigned to a different classroom environment as shown below:

pc lab

This older, outdated lab has computers arranged in a lecture-style format with some computers facing away from the rest of the room.

results

The first question of the survey was open-ended, asking for an overall impression of the room. The top 4 most common answers for each environment are included in this table. 

The next questions asked the students how well they could see the teacher and what adjustments were necessary to better see the teacher. There's an interesting discrepancy here: the majority of the Mac Lab students said they could see the teacher very well, while the majority of the PC Lab students said well, but the majority of the mac lab students had to turn their chairs halfway around to see while the PC Lab students said no adjustment was necessary. This suggests that a minor adjustment resulted in better ability to see overall.

Next the students were asked to rank their environments on 6 characteristics as denoted on the graph below on a Likert scale of very poor to excellent. There is a clear contrast between the PC Lab and the Mac Lab (denoted 1 and 2, respectively), as a significant portion of the students ranked the PC lab as poor or very poor on every characteristic, while the Mac Lab is never rated less than neither good nor bad on any category. Finally, we come to motivation. Again on a Likert scale, the students were asked to rank their opinions on 7 statements from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The last statement, "doing well in school is a source of pride for me", is a measure of intrinsic motivation and we can see that both groups agreed with that statement to some degree, although it is important to note that a majority of the PC lab students strongly agreed, versus. just agreeing. As regards the other statements, the first, The visibility of the teacher affected my ability to focus, saw a similarity of responses from both groups, with both groups generally agreeing or feeling neutral about it. However, all the students in the Mac Lab agreed with or felt neutral towards the second statement, During the lecture I found that my mind was wandering and I couldn’t pay attention, versus only 80% of the PC lab students, with the other 20% disagreeing, indicating that they had no problem paying attention. This becomes a trend in the rest of the data, with slightly more of the students in the Mac Lab showing an inability to focus and a lack of motivation than the PC Lab students, with more of the ML students not taking notes, not feeling that they understood the lecture (lack of confidence). We also see that the PC lab students more often strongly agreed with the statements than the Mac Lab students did. Based on these data there doesn’t seem to be a correlation, as we would expect to see significantly higher motivation from the ML students based on their impressions of the classroom environment. The fact that we do not could be related to the difference in intrinsic motivation between the two groups as evidenced in the survey, or the small sample size, indicating that more testing is needed to confirm these results.

discussion

The first step is to repeat this survey, preferably several times, using a bigger and more randomized sample: bigger in number, but also more varied, perhaps taking random participants from other colleges at Auburn. Once a correlation has been more definitively established, we can move into determining which aspects of the classroom specifically are affecting motivation: is it the amount of natural light, is the arrangement of the desks, the overall atmosphere, and so on, and begin to test that. Ultimately the final goal is to connect these results with previous studies on classroom design and work towards the ideal classroom design for the ideal physical learning environment.

The reason why it’s so important to work towards that ideal environment is that the US is falling behind in the education rankings, in the quality of the education students are receiving as well as simply how many students are completing their education (Program for International School Assessment, 2012). Speculation is widespread as to why, and we look at everything from standardized testing, to the quality of teachers, but we never question the design of our classrooms (Gordon, 2013). Our environments have a greater impact on us than we often realize, so if we can become fairly sure that we have the best learning environments possible, and take that out of the complicated equation that is a quality education, we can one step further to improving American education as a whole.

Small Changes, Big Impact: Development of a research-based infographic with cost-effective interior design solutions for senior living communities in the state of Alabama

This was my Honors Senior Capstone project to complete my Honors College curriculum. I presented this project at the Auburn Undergraduate Research Symposium 2018 and won second place for Oral Presentation in Social Science, Education, and Creative Scholarship in Design, Arts and Humanities. I was advised by a member of the Interior Design faculty, Kelly Martin, to complete this project.

abstract

Baby boomers are aging, changing the senior living industry as they do so. The number of Americans aged 65 and older will double by 2060 and the number of Americans with dementia is projected to triple from 5 million in 2013 to 14 million by 2030 (Population Reference Bureau, 2016). Because of this, options for retirement homes and assisted living communities are becoming more crucial to healthcare in the United States than ever before. However, it is not simply about offering enough places for seniors to live; the quality of these spaces is also of utmost importance. Now more than ever, facility owners are seeking evidence-based design solutions to make the interior design of these facilities more capable of extending and enhancing seniors’ quality of life. As facility owners and designers seek to address this new growth, an increasingly important question of cost and affordability emerges. How can communities implement design elements that are healing and competitive in the market, but at a price affordable to the average senior? In keeping with the land-grant mission of Auburn University, this study seeks to identify best practices for the interior design of senior living communities in the state of Alabama through a three-step research based process, (1) reviewing current interior design recommendations for senior living facilities, (2) identifying design components commonly lacking in senior living communities in Alabama, and (3) developing a research-based infographic that could be made available to assist senior living facilities in the state of Alabama, sharing cost-effective, easily implementable interior design ideas to enhance quality of life. Design suggestions would be presented in the context of making small, affordable changes that may help Alabama facilities compete with cutting edge facilities around the country while also enhancing quality of life for residents.

METHODS

This project had a three-pronged approach: looking first at best aging practices, then identifying trends in senior living design that support these practices, and finally cross-referencing this list with trends in senior living design in Alabama to make sure they are relevant suggestions.

To determine best aging practices, I drew primarily from two sources: Blue Zones by Dan Buettner, and Live Long, Die Short by Roger Landry, M.D., MPH. These two books focus on evidence-based ways to stay healthy and age successfully, but in different ways. The first, Blue Zones, was inspired by Buettner's travels as a National Geographic writer, when he stumbled upon communities of people that lived longer than anywhere else. These places, which he termed blue zones, had higher proportions of centenarians than anywhere else on the planet. So he gathered a group of aging and longevity experts and traveled around to these different pockets of longevity and did research to determine the specific things these individuals did to live so long and so well. 

Blue Zones Principles:

• Move naturally

• Hara Hachi Bu (eat until you're 80% full)

• Avoid meat and processed foods

• Drink red wine

• Find your purpose

• Take time to relieve stress

• Participate in a spiritual community

• Make family a priority

• Be surrounded by those who share these values

All of these principles and tips are valid, helpful information, but the list is a little unwieldy. To make it easier to use these principles, I organized them under the framework of the Six Dimensions of Wellness, developed by the National Wellness Institute. The dimensions are: emotional, physical, social, spiritual, occupational, and intellectual wellness. Now that I had a concise framework of aging principles, I needed to determine best design practices.

To determine design trends, I looked to AIA's Design For Aging Review, or DFAR, specifically DFAR12. DFAR looks at exemplary senior living projects and publishes case studies about them. I looked through 20 projects recognized by DFAR12 and noted design elements present. The top trends were then matched with the wellness trait that the trend supports. The resulting synthesis of these two things became the infographic:

infographic

The infographic takes the design trends and makes suggestions for easy implementation for Alabama senior living facilities. They are ranked by cost, but still achieve the design element displayed in the DFAR12 case studies. Each design suggestion is also marked by icons that indicate the element of wellness associated with it.