SENSE CLASSROOM
Classroom E219A: SENSE Classroom by HKS
Goal: The HKS SENSE Classroom advocates for life-long learning across diverse generations by prioritizing health, wellness, and human comfort within an immersive learning environment.
The classroom is organized into quadrants to accommodate ‘K-Gray’ or kindergarten through the workforce and is designed to meet the needs of specific educational phases:
- K-5 Primary/Elementary School
- 6-12 Middle/High School
- 12-20 College/University, Higher Education
- 21+ Workplace, Professional Development, Career Training
Each zone features muzo furniture selections which promotes safety, wellbeing and incorporates sustainability and ergonomic features to support behaviors that accommodate human comfort. The classroom integrates technology across the lifecycle and reinforces cooperative groups to consider options for virtual engagement across the learning landscape.
Focus: As a living research lab, the classroom increases awareness of evidence-based design principles and emphasizes qualitative human-center design aspects within an adaptable learning space. In the K or elementary zone, creative maker studios enable design-thinking and making pedagogies. In the post-graduate and technical training zone, a nursing clinical simulation area demonstrates experiential learning through a technology enhanced robotic manikin. The classroom encourages engagement through sightlines while accommodating collaboration with adjustable furniture, integrated technology, and the inclusion of environmental monitoring sensors. Visible live readings of the spaces’ environmental conditions will make the qualitative data visible to all occupants to engage with the performance. Sensors measure environmental conditions to emphasis the importance of indoor environment health with metrics such as temperature, humidity, acoustic levels, light levels, indoor air quality (IAQ)- carbon dioxide, volatile organic compounds or VOCs and particulate matter.
Impact: The Sense Classroom will be instrumental in featuring health and wellness design principles to explore learning environment effectiveness from a human-centered design research perspective. The incorporation of occupant comfort surveys, the integration of technology for collaboration tools with environmental monitoring sensors to monitor performance of the space is an opportunity to create a living research experiment where occupants have access to research that supports social and emotional learning.
Partners: Boxlight, Interface, Lightspeed, Muzo, nora by Interface, OnPoint Learning Environments