Reduce tension, keep plants in offices, classrooms
By IANSThursday, September 3, 2009
WASHINGTON - House plants can help reduce tension and stress among office workers, who spend more than 80 percent of the day indoors.
Researchers found the presence of plants in homes and workplaces exerted a positive effect on headaches and fatigue and hoarseness.
Interior plants have also been shown to increase work productivity. In one study, employees’ reaction time on computer tasks improved by 12 percent when plants were present.
Jennifer S. Doxey and Tina Marie Waliczek, agricultural scientists from Texas State University (TSU), and Jayne M. Zajicek, horticulturist from Texas A&M University, are testing the impact of plants on student performance and satisfaction in the classroom.
“Our results showed that interior plants appeared to have the greatest impact on students who were in the classroom that had no other natural elements,” said Waliczek.
The main objective of the study was to investigate the impact of plants in classrooms on course performance and student perceptions of the course and instructor.
The study was designed to include a minimum of two classes of the same course work taught by the same professor in the same room during one semester.
Three sets of two classes each and 385 students were included within the study. Throughout the semester, an experimental group of students attended classes in rooms that contained an assortment of tropical plants. The control group of students attended class in rooms with no plants.
Statistically significant differences were found between control and treatment groups when students scored questions related to “learning”, “instructors’ enthusiasm”, and “instructors’ organisation”, says a TSU statement.
Students from the group whose classrooms included plants rated these items higher on the satisfaction. Conversely, of the two student groups, the most apparent differences were reported by students who attended class in the room that was windowless and stark.
These findings were published in a recent issue of HortScience.
