Building Features in Schools That Influence Academic Performance

School decision makers are faced with a great many decisions when considering a school renovation or new school building. All stakeholders want a building that is safe and provides an optimal learning environment. However, it is often difficult to know which building features will have the greatest effect on student learning. Because of a limited understanding of the relationship between individual building features and student learning, researchers at the University of Oklahoma hope to explore how building components influence student and teacher performance. This paper explores the importance of school building features that can be designed and changed during a renovation project. The hope is to one day determine which features have the greatest impact on student test scores. The research team believes that although it is difficult to find the exact relationship between each building features and student outcomes with one study, if multiple users repeat the same or similar studies, hopefully we will one day know the effect of these building features. In order to develop feature building users survey and physical assessment tools, it was necessary for investigators to develop a list of important building features and their associated definitions in layman terms. This was accomplished through utilization and conducting of a CAB （community advisory board） and subject matter expert materials. In addition, previous research relating to different school building features and their associations with student performance were reviewed. To define and narrow the list the researchers, community educational, and building professionals rated based on their professional experience, how directly related each feature is to student performance. The building feature list serves as a starting point to determine which features should be analyzed in a later phase of the project. It is hoped that resulting tools based on the work of this project can be used by school decision-makers and researchers to access building features that have been identified through research as being important for student and teacher performance.

Prediction and Backtracking Models of Life Cycle Cost Based on School Facility Conditions in South Korea

After the introduction of BTL （Build-Transfer-Lease） projects in 2005, most construction projects of school facilities have been implemented in BTL system. However, concern about whether the school facilities can be managed appropriately during the 20 year as operation and management period is increasing. Therefore, the necessity of reference for evaluation standard on operating costs and the establishment of LCC （life cycle costing） prediction models is coming to the fore. In this respect, the goal of this study was to extract the variables for LCC-related models and conduct analyses of the correlations of the variables using statistical analysis tool, in order to establish LCC prediction and backtracking model based on BTL project cases of school facilities. The prediction and backtracking model of LCC will be a key for budget equalization or optimum range as one way of estimating method using LCC by year and school type. In the future, it would provide the accurate reference for analyzing and managing the actual input costs against the plan and evaluating the practical cost for long-term facility management plan as the predictive management.