The benefit and application of the natural views to students’ attention in classroom? (PART I)

　　

Abstract

　　
Based on attention restoration theory (ART), the studies relative to directive attention have two dimensions: measuring people’s attention performance in specific scenarios and identifying the restoration people recognize in a specific environment. This paper tried to explore the benefit of natural views helping improve students’ concentration and establish the design principles for classroom design. The empirical investigation was carried out in a 4-week training course, which was held for new governmental officers. We developed a system of distraction indices (DI) to present the situation of participants’ distraction. At the same time, we recorded the external factors, such as the distance from the natural view, course type, weather, etc.

　　
The analyses included two parts: spatial analyses and statistical analyses. We drew the spatial distribution of total distraction times. The participants sitting on front seats performed better attention in class. It was reasonable but we had to examine the relation between participants’ distraction and external factors. Statistically, the distraction significantly happened to participants who sat far from the natural views. Besides, another factor which affected the participants’ distraction was the weather. The sunny situation was correlative to directed attention.

　　

With this result, we depicted the benefits of natural views on helping people to concentrate on the lecture. It supported the benefits of windows with natural view in the classroom. Furthermore, this paper applied the result to develop a design for an existing classroom.