An Investigation in Muscle Activity of Student’s Neck and Back in Various University Rooms Elahe Abbasi, Pruthviraj Morbale, Sesha Saikrishna Gubbala, Yueqing Li (&) , and Brian Craig Industrial Engineering Department, Lamar University, Beaumont, TX, USA {eabbasi,pmorbale,sgubbala, yueqing.li,craigbn}@lamar.edu Abstract. This study investigates the effects of three different sitting positions on neck and back of students in two various class layouts under class activities. One of the classrooms is traditional in which students sit parallel to the screen and the other one which is more recent one, seats are perpendicular to the screen. Sitting positions include seats in various part of classroom. In this approach, the activity of back muscle, Trapezius Pars descendens (TRP-UP), and neck muscle, Sternocleidomastoid (SCM), are explored. Results show that class layout has a significant effect on both SCM and TRP. Yet, students sitting positions has significant effect only on SCM. Moreover, based on questionnaires’ output, students feel more comfortable in both their neck and back, when they sit in the middle of traditional classes. Keywords: Muscle activity Á Classroom layout Á Sitting position Á TRP-UP Á SCM Á ANOVA 1 Introduction With the increase in simultaneous usage of laptop and projection screens in the classrooms, classroom layouts and sitting positions play an important role in the stu- dent comfort levels [1]. When the sitting arrangement is not parallel to the blackboard, students need to rotate their neck and trunk every time to look at the blackboard for the whole lecture, but they don’t need to move their neck and trunk when they are sitting parallel to the blackboard. In general, the preference is given to accommodate maxi- mum number of people in a classroom without considering the psychological and physical aspects of sitting arrangements on student’s body. But physical environments of classrooms have a vital role in student’s satisfaction both physically and cognitively. In fact, a higher level of satisfaction can increase the level of skills, mentality, and knowledge of students [2]. Now days most of the universities have new classrooms which contain desktop computers and projection screen. In these classrooms, students have to move their neck and back muscles repeatedly to use computers and focusing on the screen together to follow the instructor that may cause fatigue [3]. Muscle activities in both neck and © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 W. Karwowski et al. (Eds.): AHFE 2020, AISC 1215, pp. 102–108, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51549-2_14