Study on the Relationship between Thermal Comfort and Learning Efficiency of Different Classroom-Types in Transitional Seasons in the Hot Summer and Cold Winter Zone of China

Abstract

The physical environment of classrooms has a strong relationship with student learning performance and health. Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2019, almost all universities have begun implementing closed instructional management, which has forced students to spend a much longer amount of time inside the classroom. This has also led to an increasing problem of thermal comfort in classroom indoor environments. In this paper, classrooms evolved from three dominant teaching modes at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University (ZSTU), located in the Hot Summer and Cold Winter (HSCW) zone of China, were selected as experimental spaces. Meanwhile, 12 learning groups with 60 students (30 of each sex) were selected as the tested samples. The relationship between thermal comfort and learning efficiency of the tested students was established through thermal comfort questionnaires and learning efficiency tests under the typical natural conditions in transition seasons. Based on this, improvement strategies were proposed for the current state of the classroom environment, providing a database for optimizing the environmental conditions of university classrooms in HSCW zone on the basis of improving students’ learning efficiency.