Effect of Acoustic and Thermal Comfort to Support Learning Process in a University

Teaching and learning activities are the main part of success in implementing education at university. However, the existing condition of indoor acoustic and indoor thermal are factors that disrupt both to students and to lecturer in the classroom. This paper presents a study regarding effect of indoor acoustic and thermal towards comfort of students in classroom. The type of classroom involved in this study was based on their partition that used for separate the adjacent classroom, namely tacon partition (C1 room) and brick partition (C2 room). The phases of the study were consisted of two parts of the investigation where the first part was to measure the indoor acoustic to model its distribution and also measure indoor thermal to obtain the existing value. Additionally, the second phase is accomplished by distributing questionnaires simultaneously during the measurement period. Subsequently, the following part is to model the condition of indoor acoustic by using Surfer software v. 11. The findings indicate that the C1 room having intensity of noise within the range of56.5-68.5 dBA while the C2 room having intensity of noise within the range of 62-96 dBA and it need to be insulated. In addition, the noise intensity doesn't meet the acoustical criteria for educational purpose, which is 55 dBA. However, the questionnaire results show that the respondents are feel comfort with the existing noise intensity level in those two rooms. Thus, it can be concluded that the comfort is a perception that is built in a everybody's mind and it can't be determined directly by threshold value. This study suggests that psychosocial aspect is also an important aspect that needs to be considered for an experiment which involves human behaviour. Finally, these two approaches between direct measurement and questionnaire survey give an useful perspective for building designer to design a building which is not only improve the building performance but also fulfils the needed of the building's occupants.