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INDEX
Over the years, much has been developed:
HISTORY
The Learnometer project began back in 2014. Looking at learning in elite sports (eg our work with Olympic teams) it was clear that an aggregation of marginal gains might add up to really significant gains in performance. Everything matters if you are seeking the best outcomes. There are so many details.
Looking at learning spaces, we sought to explore & measure those potential marginal gains and were, bluntly, horrified by what we found. The science was already clear for variables like CO2, temperature, TVOC, noise and more, but the classroom readings that we were seeing were a very long way from optimal. Often damagingly so.
So we began the task of building a sensor filled box, with a cloud based dashboard, to help teachers, children and others, to make spaces for learning that were optimal.
We pioneered a string of effective prototypes. We designed the PCBs, 3D printed a variety of cases, wrestled with callibration, tested, tested and tested. And more:
Eventually, we settled for adding functionality and modifications to to an existing device, in partnership with good friends at Gratnells - another Essex based education company.
LEARNOMETER TODAY
Learnometer remains a unique combination of hardware, software and analysed data that help learners, and thus schools, perform better by optimising physical environments for learning. The process of making learning better also engages everyone as reflective learners, improving their learning further.
Throughout this project, our research, and others', has confirmed that poor light levels, the wrong temperatures, inappropriate sound volumes or rhythms, humidity, air pollution, CO2, and TVOCs can all impair learning. Our Learnometer research tool automatically samples your classroom environment, and makes suggestions through a unique algorithm as to what might be changed to allow students to learn and perform at their best.
Although each of these variables matter individually, our research embraces the aggregation of marginal gains. What we don't know yet is the extent to which learning in a high CO2 environment will more widely damage your impaired concentration, so that the further impact of too hot, or too dark is even more damaging that would otherwise be the case. We have a lot of data - several million hours now. As our little production Learnometer boxes roll out we will have even more data - anonymised of course - to explore.
We don't expect multiple sub-optimal factors to make learning anything other than worse however. Together, they will multiply the damage. It's time to make learning better.
Thankfully, as you will see from the resources page, mitigating those damaging factors is often very affordable and can make for fascinating project work with children. See for example this CO2 busting plant wall:
Our cloud-based logging and dashboards allow you to see, at a glance, how your environment looks, and lets you compare it with benchmark environments, or over time, or contrasting different locations. You can analyse general learning spaces, or specific areas like examination and test rooms.
Since the pandemic, much use has been made of the opportunity to optimise home learning and home working environments too. Changes you make can be evaluated and compared, prior to being finessed over time.
From Professor Stephen Heppell
To learn well is complex.
Alongside the hard work, the pedagogy, collegiality, passion, delight, knowledge, joy, and engagement there is the detail of physical learning spaces themselves. Learnometer builds on work I have been involved in for three decades, designing better classroom environments and understanding how learner-led design increases achievement in measurable ways.
We’re now at an exciting point where the advent of affordable Internet connected smart devices has combined with further research on how factors such as light, heat and air-quality affect classrooms. The team at Learnometer have developed some amazing devices to measure this data automatically, and we’d love to see them help your school.
There is plenty yet to learn, but by joining our Learnometer research family, you will be changing and improving learning forever, whilst informing significant change in your own learning spaces too.
Thanks!
Stephen
all rights reserved - patents pending
this page created February 2014, last modified Wednesday, May 26, 2021 12:25 PM
