No evidence that short-term exposure to window views improved final exam performance: A three-year randomized controlled trial in a university lecture course

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s Providing views is known to benefit occupants’ cognitive performance. However, it remains unclear whether having a view also improves learning outcomes. We investigated whether taking an exam in rooms with views leads to higher performance compared with taking an exam in a windowless classroom. We used the final exam scores from an undergraduate course, with 62 points and 37 points assigned to conceptual and calculation questions, respectively, to measure the outcome. Over three years, we randomly assigned students to rooms with and without views (171 vs 154 students). We found no evidence that having window views improved final exam scores (with view: median = 73.5; without view: median = 72; ΔMedian = +1.5, p = 0.27). We found the consistent results for each specific question type. Bayesian analysis further indicated that the observed data were 4.5 times more likely under the assumption of similar outcomes between the two conditions than under the assumption that performance would differ. As a post-hoc analysis, we built a linear regression model including two variables: the presence of window views as the primary variable and students’ previous achievement before the exam as an explanatory background variable. Pre-exam performance was calculated using scores from proctored quizzes, homework, activities, and attendance. We found that the benefit of having window views was negligible compared with the effect of prior achievement on final exam scores (+1.3 points with window view, p = 0.35). For now, it is difficult to suggest that having window views is associated with higher performance.

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