Have you ever wondered why you didn’t do as well as you had hoped on a final university exam held in a large gymnasium or hall, despite all the time you spent studying? Well, it turns out that high ceilings might be the culprit.
New research conducted by the University of South Australia and Deakin University has discovered a connection between exam rooms with high ceilings and lower academic performance.
A study featured in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, led by Dr. Isabella Bower from UniSA, who is trained in both architecture and psychology, along with Associate Professor Jaclyn Broadbent from Deakin University, who specializes in educational psychology, reveals that the design of a building can impact our ability to carry out tasks effectively.
Dr. Bower and her team analyzed data from 15,400 undergraduate students spanning from 2011 to 2019 across three campuses at an Australian university. They compared students’ exam results to the ceiling heights of the rooms where the exams took place.
Even after accounting for individual student differences and past performance in coursework, they observed that students tended to have lower scores than expected when taking exams in rooms with high ceilings.
The researchers considered factors such as the students’ age, gender, the time of year the exam was taken, and whether they had previous exam experience in the courses studied.
Dr. Bower suggests that it is challenging to determine whether this impact is due to the room’s size itself or other factors like student density or insufficient insulation, which can lead to varying temperatures and air quality, all of which can influence the brain and body.
“These spaces are typically designed for purposes other than examinations, such as gymnasiums, exhibitions, events, and performances,” Dr. Bower explains.
“The crucial point is that students are at a disadvantage in large rooms with high ceilings, and we need to explore the brain mechanisms involved and whether this affects all students equally.”
The findings are supported by experiments Dr. Bower conducted using virtual reality (VR) to measure brain activity of participants in different room settings, while maintaining control over factors like temperature, lighting, and noise.
By utilizing electroencephalography (EEG) to measure brain cell communication through electrodes attached to the scalp, her team altered room sizes and monitored brain responses. They also tracked heart rate, breathing, and perspiration to determine if individuals could subconsciously detect environmental changes.
In these VR experiments, sitting in a larger room triggered brain activity associated with focusing on a challenging task, prompting the researchers to question whether performance in large spaces is compromised.
“Based on these outcomes, we became curious to apply our lab results to a real-world dataset to see if being in a large space like a gymnasium while concentrating on an essential task would lead to poorer performance,” Dr. Bower shares.
“Examinations have been a fundamental part of our education system for over 1300 years, shaping students’ career paths and lives,” notes Associate Professor Jaclyn Broadbent.
Many universities and schools in Australia utilize large indoor spaces for exams to streamline logistics and costs. Recognizing the potential impact of the physical environment on student performance is crucial, in order to make necessary adjustments ensuring every student has an equal chance to succeed,” she emphasizes.
“These discoveries will help us in designing buildings where we study and work, allowing us to perform at our best,” she adds.
