Year of Award

2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

Master of Education (MEd)

Degree Name

Curriculum and Instruction

Department or School/College

School of Education

Committee Chair

Al Yonovitz

Commitee Members

Nancy Dold, Martin Horejsi

Keywords

Classroom Acoustics, noise reverberation

Subject Categories

Curriculum and Instruction

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to model a typical classroom in a school for the Deaf inKelaniya,Sri Lanka. Intense effort by teachers provides intervention for students with significant hearing impairment. The school is an oral school, and the philosophy is to utilize the residual hearing of each student through the use of high-powered hearing aids. Like many schools inSri Lanka, the Centre for Education of Hearing-Impaired Children (CEHIC) has many classrooms that have both high ambient noise with long reverberation times. Both noise and reverberation interfere with the sound signal, the teacher’s voice, and provide a poor learning environment where speech discrimination is critical.

Before actually modifying a classroom, it is now possible to virtually model a classroom using architectural design software. The modified design can then be assessed through the input of sound into the classroom modelling construction materials used in acoustic modeling, and then generating a sound output that would be nearly equivalent to an actual modified classroom. A room was selected at CECIH, and the modeling process was applied using relatively low cost materials. Word intelligibility was measured with normal listeners for sound files created before and after the modifications. The results indicated a 21.8 percent improvement (p<.0001). Reverberation time for the modeled classroom decreased from 1.96 seconds to .32 seconds.

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© Copyright 2015 Polwatte Krishantha Silva