Courtyard design in schools and its influence on students’ satisfaction

Abstract

The courtyard as architectural passive design strategy has proved its capability of enhancing the thermal conditions of buildings. Apart from the good thermal impacts of the courtyard, there are other effects that were not tapped and need to be explored such as the satisfaction of the courtyard’s users in terms of psychological and wellbeing factors. This study attempts to investigate and assess the relationship between the existing design of the school courtyards in UAE with the students’ satisfaction. A self-administrated questionnaire was distributed between students of secondary classes in two private schools in UAE to gather the data. Six hypotheses were developed to explore and validate the mentioned relationship; SPSS (Statistical Package for Science Software) program was used to apply several tests such as regression analysis to examine the developed hypotheses. The results showed high relationship significance between the School Courtyard Design and Students’ Satisfaction, so that the courtyard design can shape the student satisfaction as global variable with 29.2%, with many other important findings. The work opens the door for architects and school principals alike to understand the effect of the school courtyard design on students’ satisfaction, which consequently leads to better academic achievement.