Teaching acoustics during a pandemic: Lab in a Box for experiments at home

Abstract

In March 2020 with the advent of COVID, emergency plans were put in place to deliver the Master's Course in Environmental and Architectural Acoustics entirely on-line. This was necessary as although the acoustics laboratory is large, it was deemed to be unsafe for face-to-face teaching due to a complete lack of ventilation in the anechoic and reverberation chambers. Hence, it was necessary to create an alternative for the 2020/21 delivery. In September 2020, it was decided that a “Lab in a Box” supported by on-line demonstrations and pre-recorded films would create the best alternative experience for the postgraduate students. The “Lab in a Box” allowed demonstrations to be replicated at home or in the garden using a Windows based calibrated measurement platform based on audio components. Examples of such laboratories included Fast and Slow Measurements, Noise Exposure, Noise Survey, Loudness, Reverberation Time, and Speech Intelligibility. The results showed that the students gained from more independence and increased flexibility in delivery, achieving very similar marks. This has opened up the possibility of increasing student numbers by reusing these alternative teaching strategies in the future.