Coursework - Module BENV0192 - Built Environment Lab: Monitoring, Measurement and Analysis

C/W: Environmental and learning conditions in lecture theatres: A case study from UCL

PLEASE READ THIS COURSEWORK BRIEF CAREFULLY AND MORE THAN ONCE!

Please ensure you keep a full back-up copy of all the work you submit.

Aim and objectives of coursework

The main aim of the coursework is to provide you with a sound grounding in the basic techniques and skills needed to manage and complete a building assessment task and write a report that communicates the work carried out, the methods applied and the outcomes of your analysis work. These skills will be invaluable when you undertake your dissertation (and in your future professional life).

The context of this work is that UCL is aiming to make its building stock net zero by 2030 and it also wants to improve the learning conditions for students within lecture theatres (LT). You (as a building performance consultant) have been commissioned to produce a report on the environmental and learning conditions in a UCL LT. The report should be written such that it helps make a range of recommendations regarding the best way of improving lecture theatre environmental performance and conditions. This could be your entry into an under-developed area of built environmental research.

The project has the following output: a report written in the style of a building performance evaluation assessment. The report has a short (around 500-word) executive summary. You need to convince the reader succinctly (as a building facilities manager has many items to read) that the report is worthy of their further attention, essentially by conveying very clearly:

The report should cover all aspects of the building/lecture theatre’s environmental performance including:

•    Energy performance - based on Display Energy Certificates (DEC). Available here:

https://www.gov.uk/find-energy-certificate

•    Thermal comfort – based on temperature and RH monitoring and student questionnaire responses

•    Indoor air quality (IAQ) – student questionnaire responses and CO2  sensor (if there is one in the room)

•    Lighting conditions – Based on Lux monitoring and student questionnaire responses

•    Acoustics – based on observation and student questionnaire responses

You may want to focus more on a specific area. You have multiple options for the content of your coursework. You find some ideas below, but you need to specify your focus further in your aim(s) and objectives. You can also combine some of the elements if desired.

A: A focus on air movement and/or temperature and the effects on thermal comfort and learning

B: A focus of lighting or acoustics and its effects on student experience and learning

C: A focus on different physical characteristics of lecture theatres (lighting and/or ventilation) and their effects on student experience and lecture theatre design.

D: A focus on different sub-groups and their different experience, e.g. because they have different gender, sit somewhere different in the lecture theatre.

The coursework has four main work packages (WPs). You will start by reviewing the existing knowledge in the field and formulate the aim and objectives of your study (WP 1). At the same time, you will set out to collect original data via a survey of UCL students and monitor a lecture theatre (WP2). The third part will concentrate on improving your analytical skills (WP 3). The last part is to bring it all together into a coherent report, draw final conclusions and offer potential retrofit recommendations (WP 4). These work packages involve a big task in terms of managing the work and managing your time.

The Work Packages (WPs) of the project are summarised in the workflow diagram below.

WP 1 - Project management, background research/review of literature

Before you start, you will need to spend some time planning how you will complete the project by the deadline and what is required for the report, which means identifying exactly what needs to be done, and by when. Don’t forget to back up everything. As early as possible, you should start identifying the structure, length, and contents of the final report, paragraph by paragraph. You will have to carry out background research on current knowledge and standards for lecture theatres, identify existing knowledge gaps and set out the aim and objectives of the assessment. In terms of subject matter, your aims and objectives need to be aligned with the type of data you are collecting. Thus, have a close look at the questionnaire and the coursework data entry spreadsheet. The introduction needs to provide context and critically summarise and evaluate relevant literature.

WP2 - Data collection through monitoring and survey

In WP2 (yet only in WP2) you will work in a group. Your group will choose a UCL lecture theatre (see Appendix 1 on the moodle page in the ‘Assessment tab’) . You only need to collect and submit data once per group. Please divide the following sub-tasks evenly between your group. It is part of your task to arrange the visit with the lecturer before a lecture in your allocated LT, to place the HOBO and to hand out the questionnaires with the seating plan on the back. Please make sure the whole group visits your allocated LT. WP2.1 - Physical survey: You will need to physically inspect and survey your allocated case study lecture theatre and the building it is located in. You will have to draw a floor plan (if not already available in Appendix 2) with good approximations of the measurements of your lecture theatre. You will need to print this plan on the rear side of the paper questionnaire to allow students attending a lecture to mark on it where they are sitting. More details on seat measurements can be found in Appendix 3 – make sure to bring a tape measure! Additional information, including e.g. numbers and areas of vents and arrangements for heating or cooling can be useful later and should be added to the drawing and reported in column DY of your spreadsheet.

Please report student feedback in column DX.

WP2.2 - Monitoring and DEC: You will be provided with HOBOs that will used to measure factors that contribute to its environmental quality, including its thermal and lighting performance. Make sure that HOBOs are appropriately placed before the LT starts. You will also need to retrieve information about the building’s energy performance from its Display Energy Certificate (https://www.gov.uk/find-energy-certificate).

WP2.3 - Indoor questionnaire survey: You need to obtain responses from students (not other EDE students) on their perceptions of the environmental and learning conditions in the lecture theatre. (If less than 30 questionnaires are returned, you need to go a second time and can combine data from both visits.) In your communication with the lecturer you can also find out how many questionnaires you should bring. You are required to provide the lecturer with the information sheet, found Appendix 4, in either paper or electronic form. The questionnaire can be found in Appendix 5. The survey should be undertaken over the course of one 60–180 minute lecture. You will have to photocopy a sufficient quantity of questionnaires with a copy of your A4 sized plan on the back, for handout in your allocated lecture theatre. You will also have access to HOBO dataloggers for monitoring indoor dry bulb temperature, relative humidity and lighting levels during the duration of the survey. Respondents should mark their seating position on the plan. After the lecture you should collect all the completed questionnaires and enter all your data into the coursework data entry template.

WP2.4 - Data cleaning: As a group, you will then need to clean the data because people may make mistakes, e.g. reporting millimetres instead of meters, wrongly converting clothing levels to numbers, etc.

Please highlight areas that include obvious mistakes and include a comment what needs to be done and what has been done once completed in column DZ. You may also need to do further cleaning of the data yourself if any uncleaned elements remain. Practicing how to deal with the complexity of real-world data is an important element of a master-level coursework.

WP3 - Analysis, benchmarking and visualisation of survey data

This part of the project will involve analysis of the data you have collected for your allocated LT and comparing key environmental performance metrics to other UCL LTs and benchmarks/standards. You should also use the overall spreadsheet in order to identify the key results on the environmental and learning conditions across all surveyed lecture theatres, and any relationships between key metrics. You are required to present descriptive statistics and the two-types of inferential statistics you learn: correlation/regression analyses and t-tests. You need to identify the specific conditions of your case study LT and use data from the full sample of LTs to look for evidence for general trends/relationships. For example, you may attempt to explore whether there is a relationship between perceived thermal comfort and reported learning conditions. You can test whether your lecture theatre is different from the other lecture theatres, using the pre-defined comparison on the Averages tab or using a t-test. It is also beneficial if you make some use of the verbal feedback in the spreadsheet.

WP4 - Putting it all together in a final report

This writing task will run in parallel with many of the other tasks. The finished report should combine all the work and analysis into a coherent structure. The final report needs to be your own work. You find more guidelines in Appendix 6. You have to summarise the key findings for your case study LT and compare to and analyse trends for all UCL lecture theatres. You also need to provide any recommended actions. Give sufficient emphasis to the discussion of implications. You should also relate your findings and implications back to the literature. Why should we think differently based on your assessment? How do we need to act differently based on your assessment? A well-structured report that presents all the information and analysis concisely and in a consistent way, so that the evidence, environmental issues and remedies are all clearly identified, will receive higher marks.

As this module reflects real world research conditions, there is a strong emphasis on dealing with complexity and data imperfections, on self-learning and discovery of useful resources , but there will also be technical support and advice available on academic writing and statistics both on the module Moodle site and through tutorials. What may seem overwhelming at the beginning does have a clear logic and order. It will all come together if you keep on track and give sufficient emphasis to the probably most difficult element of this module and coursework: project management.

Documents to be handed in

Please submit the following documents on the Built Environment Lab Moodle site:

Survey data

•    Please submit one zip file to the submission area on Moodle that includes:

o scanned copies of the student response sheets; and

o an Excel file with the cleaned data that you / your team collected.

Draft aims and objectives and report structure submission (NOT mandatory)

•    If you find it helpful, please submit your draft aims and objectives and report structure that include a

bit on the motivation of your work as you would write in the introduction chapter with clearly motivated aims and objectives of your study to the submission area on Moodle.

•    This submission will not be assessed formally, but thinking through formulating your aim and objectives clearly is a truly valuable learning experience.

•    We want to see correctly-named, plagiarism-free submissions that motivate and narrow down on an interesting area of investigation.

Group presentation (Maximum 10 mins / 8 slides)

•    Each group member should present at least one slide each.

•    Slides should cover the following:

o Lecture theatre description (physical properties)

o Energy performance - based on Display Energy Certificates (DEC)

o Thermal comfort - based on temperature and RH monitoring and student questionnaire responses

o Indoor air quality (IAQ) - student questionnaire responses and CO2 sensor (if there is one in the room)

o Lighting conditions - Based on Lux monitoring and student questionnaire responses

o Acoustics - based on observation and student questionnaire responses

o Summary/Recommendations

Article/Report

•    Please submit the final report with appropriate appendices to the submission area on Moodle.

•    You will have to submit:

•    a soft copy (electronic version) of your report in PDF format; and

•    the accompanying Excel workbook with all the data and charts you generated (this will not be

marked but it may be used as part of the general supporting information when judging a report on the boundary between grades).

In total, the main text of the report must not exceed 3000 words and must not exceed 18 pages, excluding table of contents and appendices. Words in tables and figures do not count towards the word limit. It is not easy keeping to these restrictions, as you must include relevant data (including a summary of the

questionnaire, monitoring data) and link all aspects of the work together in the discussion and conclusions.

Figures also need to be readable and appropriately labelled. Try to only include information that is relevant. A sample of the collected data may be included as an appendix, but this is not essential. Other supporting

information can also go in the appendix, such as a copy of the questionnaire.

All submissions will have to be submitted at the date and time that is indicated on the BENV0192 Moodle

page. Make sure you name your files accordingly, otherwise this will be reflected in the mark you receive for presentation and we may not even be able to associate a submission with you.

Statement on the use of artificial intelligence

This coursework follows UCL’s category 2 regulations of the use of artificial intelligence (AI), which states that AI tools AI tools can be used, but only in an assistive role. This includes, for example, occasional improving

sentences in English. If you use AI, you need to describe how you used it in your methods and/or

acknowledgments section. It would also be useful to provide further details in the appendix. IT IS

IMPORTANT THAT YOU DO NOT UPLOAD ANY OF THE DATA AS SUCH TO ANY AI TOOL. If you use an AI tool for the data, this means that you are uploading the data to the internet and thus to servers that may be located anywhere in the world. This may have serious consequences. UCL guidance on how you might

engage with Generative AI (GenAI) in your assessments effectively and ethically can be found here:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/students/exams-and-assessments/assessment-success-guide/engaging-generative-ai- your-education-and-assessment. Details of UCL’s three categories of use of AI in assessment can be found

here:https://www.ucl.ac.uk/teaching-learning/generative-ai-hub/three-categories-genai-use-assessment .