GAIA by Actiu®, more comfortable, safer classrooms

The world of work needs innovative thinking, creativity and problem-solving skills, and this requires a stronger connection between the classroom and the world of business. A shift in the paradigm of education accelerated by new technologies and by the pandemic, in which space has become a key element and the classroom is no longer a purely aesthetic issue but is integrated into every pedagogical methodology or objective.

Actiu's involvement in recent years in the transformation of education through the design of multifunctional and flexible spaces, which allow progress towards these new learning models, is joined by Gaia by Actiu^®, a project that was established with the aim of helping to obtain the best possible conditions in workspaces and which now has also reached the classroom. It is the first smart platform for healthy and efficient spaces, which sensors the environment allowing data to be obtained about the use of classrooms and the conditions of the environment, with the aim of obtaining information of interest that has a positive impact on the well-being of students and teachers.

The Cotes Baixes High School, which Actiu has already collaborated with previously with the implementation of the Cool Working-Education pilot project to create new learning environments, has now launched the Gaia by Actiu^® system in the Aula 5.0. This is a space in which around 50 students and teaching staff from courses related to Automation, Industrial Robotics and the 2nd year of the Technological Baccalaureate of the Robotics challenge interact. Through Gaia by Actiu^®, parameters such as temperature, humidity, noise level, light, and even air quality, like the concentration of ambient carbon dioxide (CO2) and the levels of PM2.5 and PM10 particles suspended in the air, are measured in real time in the classroom. What's more, information on space density is collected, monitoring the degree of occupancy of the classroom.

Fernando Sansaloni explains that Cotes Baixes High School is evolving towards high-performance education in 100% of all the courses on offer. "This is a type of education that requires challenge-based collaborative learning, which we are piloting through flexible methodologies. This learning requires different learning spaces that allow us to respond to the different phases of the challenge and to organisational changes".

Through Gaia by Actiu^®, the aim of the Cotes Baixes High School is to create smarter spaces, organising the space better and enabling places for users to be freely reserved; as well as creating more comfortable spaces, by analysing the comfort levels of students and teachers with a view to offering a better experience, with the acoustics being key given the methodologies used in the school. On the other hand, the platform provides safer spaces, allowing, among other solutions, a more effective application of anti-Covid-19 health measures, which are so necessary during this pandemic era.

Getting to work with these methodologies requires a big investment in teacher training in terms of time and finance as well as in the adaptation of the spaces. Gaia by Actiu^®, together with other presence and assessment systems will allow us to see how the classroom is really being used through the different methodologies. Furthermore, this data can be crossed with the assessment data to study which methodologies optimise student performance.

Thanks to Gaia by Actiu^® we have taken a step beyond furniture and the design of workspaces aimed at the well-being of users, to generate truly smart classrooms that contribute directly to improving learning through the comfort, well-being and safety of students and teachers on a global scale.