Impact that Acoustic Design has on Higher Education for Non-English Speaking Students

Speech is one of the main forms of communication, and in teaching environments is fundamental to transmit the message effectively. Significant amounts of the research that has been undertaken concentrating on measuring and studying the impact of intelligibility on native populations, particularly children. There is also evidence that the acoustic design of a room has impact on the overall student experience. This investigation therefore focuses in the analysis of the possible effects that acoustic design and characteristics of heritage buildings has in higher education environments; with a particular interest in those students whose English is not their first language. Rooms and people with similar characteristics from King's College London; were used as sample for the environmental and subjective evaluation respectively. The speech transmission index was assessed in accordance to BS IEC 60268-16:2011, while reverberation time was calculated in accordance with the recommendations for precision measurements in accordance to ISO 3382-2:2008 and ISO 18233:2006. The study compares the student experience subjective acoustic evaluation, their test marks with the measured Speech Transmission Index, as well as the result of a phonetically balanced word test. Results will be presented together with analysis as to if intelligibility correlates to student experience.