Dear Colleagues, 

Acoustical quality in buildings is a critical factor that could impact occupants’ health, comfort, and performance. Its influence is more significant when it comes to educational buildings. Learning environments, including classrooms, lecture halls, and self-study rooms, must meet specific acoustical requirements in order to promote good communication and learning outcomes. To achieve optimal acoustical comfort, educational buildings must be designed and constructed with acoustics in mind, taking into account factors such as room shape, size, and layout, as well as the construction and interior materials. Although most indoor acoustic problems have been studied, there are still many new spaces worth exploring, especially in the context of personal control, brain–computer interface technologies, and artificial intelligence (AI). For example, why do occupants have different acoustic perceptions and requirements, and how to achieve personal control of acoustic quality in education buildings? How can brain–computer interface devices be used to monitor occupants’ acoustic perceptions, instead of traditional questionnaires? How to identify the optimal acoustic design for educational buildings with the help of AI? These problems are all significant and need to be answered through new studies on indoor acoustic quality. 

Therefore, this Special Issue aims to encourage any new exploration on acoustic quality in educational buildings. Both original research papers and review papers are welcomed. Potential topics include, but are not limited to: 

• Individual differences in acoustic perceptions; 
• Personal control of acoustic quality; 
• Improvement of acoustic quality in educational buildings; 
• Optimal acoustic design for educational buildings; 
• Application of machine learning and/or artificial intelligence methods in building acoustics; 
• Application of brain–computer interface technologies in acoustic perceptions; 
• Interactions between acoustic quality and other indoor environmental quality in educational buildings. 

Dr. Dadi Zhang
Prof. Massimiliano Masullo
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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