Use of smart monitoring and users’ feedback for to investigate the impact of the indoor environment on learning efficiency

This paper presents an analysis of the impact of the indoor classroom environment on students’ learning efficiency. The research is based on a classroom smart monitoring and a questionnaire about the students’ assessment of the comfort conditions and learning efficiency. Multisensor devices are used to measure the indoor temperature, relative humidity, and CO2 concentration at the students’ desks. Data analysis concerned an investigation of the spatial and temporal variation of the comfort parameters and their correlation with students’ assessment of comfort conditions and learning efficiency. The results show a significant spatial variation in the indoor comfort conditions, particularly for temperature and CO2 concentration. The indoor temperature could exceed by up to 5 °C, the temperature threshold limits value in France’s public buildings. At the beginning of the class, the learning efficiency correlates well with the students’ assessment of comfort conditions. At the end of the class, the results show a weak correlation with both recorded comfort parameters and the students’ assessment of the indoor conditions. The results indicate a decrease in learning efficiency during the class. However, students do not mainly attribute this decrease to the degradation in indoor conditions.