2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Through a collaboration between the Virtual Technology and Design program and the Integrated Design Lab at the University of Idaho, this research aims to establish a holistic framework to address the current challenges of indoor environmental quality and energy efficiency in rural schools in Idaho State. After a national report showed that Idaho had the worst-funded schools in the country, the governor launched a new initiative to retrofit poorly performing facilities. Schools across the state can use this proposed framework to benchmark current IEQ and energy performance by collecting data and outline methods to improve their classroom through education, visualization, operations, and capital improvements. Schools have significant potential to promote knowledge and skills for sustainable development through building science-related learning opportunities for students, teachers, and administrators especially when given real-time interaction with IEQ data that will improve social, economic, cultural, and environmental outcomes. With occupant high densities, an educational mission, and outposts in areas impacted by wildfire smoke, Idaho’s rural schools are ideal laboratories for understanding IEQ impacts on health, well-being, productivity, and energy use. The first research objective will establish educational modules to teach school teachers and administrators the fundamentals of building science, especially topics related to indoor environmental quality and energy performance. These modules will use real-time data collected from a sample of rural schools in Idaho and identify region-specific challenges and opportunities. The next step is to build a framework that streamlines the processes for both teachers and their students to collect IEQ data, evaluate it, visualize it, and then use it to identify opportunities for intervention. The framework will use real-time data collection as inputs to a digital twin for a dynamic virtual representation of the typical classroom. Using the digital twin, the framework will provide real-time visualization of indoor air quality data using augmented reality to facilitate learning and assessment and correlate real-time data to the physical environment and the occupants' behaviors. Incorporating the digital twin and AR will support the STEM hands-on and applied education objectives for students and teachers, making the research directly applicable to their daily activities. Finally, the framework will identify opportunities to visualize and analyze the collected data for assessment and intervention. The goal is to streamline the data collection and visualization, allowing teachers and students to navigate the collected data, assess the current trends in data, and identify opportunities for intervention.