In a ground-breaking effort to improve the school climate, Vejle Municipality has taken up the fight against the challenges of the corona pandemic. Through a new test collaboration with ÅBN, the municipality has implemented SKYEN - an initiative that is not only about fighting viruses, but also about strengthening students' understanding of the importance of ventilation.
The results of the project are promising, with the students' understanding of the indoor climate significantly improved. A study among 51 students after a 6-month test shows positive reactions, with 76% believing that their classmates have become better at contributing to a good indoor climate.
The case is built around Natural Sciences consultant, Line Kastorp Kok's experiences with the project.
"During corona in 2020, I and our working environment consultant chose to have a special focus on our indoor climate. There was already an extremely large focus on how we create a good indoor climate, precisely because there was a requirement for ventilation. This created some challenges at the primary schools , because there was no consensus on how we do it and why we actually do it."
Line and her team had high expectations of teachers who gave a hand to try it out in class and give it time, attention and priority. The teachers wanted to help the students get a handle on this indoor climate, and the cloud could help with that.
"As a municipality, we have had many ideas for our collaboration and for the process in general, and I think ÅBN has been good at playing along and saying 'we haven't tried that before, but we can probably figure it out.' . We have felt well taken in hand in relation to ÅBN's support."
"The CLOUD solved our challenges as it created awareness of why it was smart to vent - not only in relation to viruses and spreading, but also to help with the understanding of why we need to vent and what it actually does for our students' learning. "
Line and her team therefore found that CO2 was a significant factor in creating a good learning environment in the municipality.
"We are probably a bit environmentally damaged in the school administration, but it is a bit of the 'empowerment' to think, how do we create an understanding among the children and young people, and how do we give them some tools to deal with it?"
The team wanted to make concrete what climate, indoor climate and CO2 are. It's not necessarily super concrete, but that's exactly what the CLOUD could do. It could specify the indoor climate very visually.
"We saw in our survey that the students' understanding of the concept of indoor climate has improved. I can easily see that from the answers that have come in. The students have been given a repertoire of actions so they know what to do when the indoor climate is bad and can put into words the state of the indoor climate with something other than "good" and "bad" which is not necessarily given."
51 students from the schools have answered a questionnaire about SKYEN after 6 months of testing. Herein answers:
The team from ÅBN thanks Vejle Municipality for an exciting test course and really great results.
