Soundfield is a term in Education circles to describe technology that captures the voices of Teachers and Learners, and for speakers – specifically engineered to broadcast voices in learning spaces – to remove the fade of speech intelligibility over distance. It is also known as Voice Lift or Classroom Sound Enhancement Technology.
Sometimes stakeholders involved in constructing new Schools confuse soundfield with hearing augmentation.
It needs to be recognised that the May 2022 Building Quality Standards Handbook of the VSBA offers very progressive guidance about soundfield, and recognised that optimising auditory learning for all learners is a key to boosting learning.
At page 127 of this Handbook it is stated:
“Soundfield technology utilises microphones and speakers to project and protect teachers’ and speakers’ voices and assist all students to hear verbal instruction. This can be of particular benefit to students with English as a second language, auditory processing disorders as well as those who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Hearing augmentation and sound field systems must be fixed, rather than portable, in gymnasiums, multipurpose areas and libraries”
It’s important that these speakers be mounted in locations where they will not be knocked or vulnerable to tampering.
Education stakeholders need to think about adopting a dual hearing augmentation and soundfield solution to create best practice listening conditions for all learners. Such a dual solution is worthy of consideration given teacher voice strain is an issue, as is the fact that speech intelligibility fades over distance even in traditional sized learning spaces.
International research supports the use of soundfield in learning spaces.
Learn more at https://www.hearandlearn.com.au/proof