Lighting and Color: How Educational Facilities Contribute to Student Achievement

Educational facilities play an important role in the way students learn and share knowledge between themselves and other scholars. There are a lot of educational facilities being used by universities and other learning institutions, but for purposes of this discussion, we will focus on lighting and color as discussed in an article at http://www.coe.uga.edu/sdpl/researchabstracts/visual.html published by the University of Georgia College of Education.

Lighting is one of the most critical physical characteristics of educational facilities because this contributes to a classroom's visual environment. A visual environment that is conducive to learning will help students participate in classroom activities more and integrate the concepts and theories being taught. Good lighting significantly contributes to the aesthetics and psychological character of the learning environment. This is because the visual environment affects the following aspects of the learning process:

• visual stimuli
• the student's mental attitude
• as a direct result of the above, the student's scholastic performance

As for color, the choice of what colors to put in a learning space will also have an impact both in the teaching process and how students learn what is being taught. The online article mentions that color can influence student attitudes, behavior and learning through the following:

• a student's attention span
• the student's and teacher's sense of time

The proper combination of colors can help convert an atmosphere that was previously thought of as depressing and monotonous into a pleasing, exciting and stimulating environment. A change in color schemes in schools was even found to reduce absenteeism and enhance positive feelings about schools from students.

Students who saw colors that they liked had influenced their muscular tension and motor control. Warm colors were associated with slight elevations in blood pressure of children while cooler colors tneded to cause slight drops in blood pressure. When colors and lighting are combined together to create educational facilities that are mentally stimulating, they can cause an increase in the following bodily functions:

• muscular tensions
• respiration rate
• heart action
• blood pressure
• brain activity

Educaitonal Facilities as a Factor in Choosing a School

        Educational facilities are very important for students in their education and their life as a whole. As a student, you should take into consideration school facilities in your decision-making towards choosing a school to apply in.

• List – You can start evaluating the different schools you are considering by making a list. You can make a list of what you are looking for in a school or a list of the schools and what educational facilities they feature best. You can make these two lists as cross-reference against each other to decide better. It is important to have a list of what you are looking for in a school so that you will know what you really want and not be misled in the decision-making process.

• Weigh – After making an initial list, you can add to the educational facilities as a factor other factors like transportation and quality of education which can or should be your priority. You need to include academic quality, facilities and location because they are very important factors. A school may have a very attractive facility but can be located in a place which is very far or very hard to travel to.

• Eliminate – Rank the schools based on the most important factors in their order of importance. For example you can start with academic prestige, continue with facilities and conclude with location. You may decide between going to a school which has a spoon-feeding orientation, has a facility which is very conducive to studies but you are already bored with because you studied there in your high school or a school which poses a great challenge to the motivation of the students and a new and exciting environment in which you can develop your character.

        Facilities are very important in a student's studies because it is where he or she will study, learn, perform and live.