20160425 - lighting

How Just The Right Lighting May Improve Learning In Classrooms

A new study reveals what kind of lighting may best support academic performance.

We all know how just the right lighting can set “the mood” — whether you’re aiming for a romantic ambiance, an energizing workout environment, or a dimly lit atmosphere to relax in.
Now, a new study published in the journal Optics Express this week, suggests that dynamic lighting can support students’ performance in classrooms.
Researchers in South Korea found that lighting can be optimized for many various activities, from test-taking to recess to reading, and they characterized lighting by measuring their CCTs — or different correlated color temperatures — from “warm” to “cool” using the Kelvin scale.
While the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology research findings may seem obvious, they provide more evidence to support the argument that lighting can influence our well-being and that we can manipulate lighting to help improve our well-being, study co-author Dr. Hyeon-Jeong Suk, an associate professor at the institute, told The Huffington Post on Thursday.
“Besides improving human performance, variable lighting CCTs also exert a great influence on both the physical and mental conditions of humans,” Suk said. “However, such benefits of lighting have not yet been fully adopted in the educational environment. At the beginning of our research, we were shocked by the fact that the lighting facilities in educational environments were much poorer than we’d anticipated.”

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lighting-boost-learning-concentration_us_5720cb14e4b0b49df6a9b73e?utm_hp_ref=science