The participants were observed and they were questioned regarding their emotional responses to the retail space and their perception of atmosphere afterwards.
The architect Peter Zumthor observes that our perception of atmosphere is intuitive, having evolved through an advanced emotional sensibility: "Not every situation grants us time to make up our minds on whether or not we like something – or whether, indeed, we might be better heading off in the opposite direction".
The DREEM is divided into five subscales relating students' perception of learning, perception of teachers, academic self-perception, perception of atmosphere and student's social self-perception.
Cronbach's alpha for students' perception of learning, students' perception of teachers, students' academic self-perception, students' perception of atmosphere and students' social self-perception were 0.79, 0.77, 0.71, 0.81 and 0.52, respectively.
These are labeled, perception of learning, perception of course organizers, academic self perception, perception of atmosphere and social self perception.
These factors are Perception of Teaching, Perception of Learning, Academic Self-perception, Perception of Atmosphere and Social Self-perception.
For Students' Perceptions of Learning, Students' Perceptions of Teachers, Students' Academic Self-Perception, Students' Perceptions of Atmosphere and Students' Social Self Perceptions, the mean domain scores for first year students were 29/48, 26/44, 19/32, 28/48 and 16/28 respectively.
Out of the 13 items, 4 items (1, 2, 20, 21) were from Students' Perceptions of Learning, 4 items (2, 18, 29, 49) from Students' Perceptions of Teachers, 2 items (5, 26) from Students' Academic Self-Perceptions, 2 items (11, 33) from Students' Perceptions of Atmosphere and 1 item (15) was from Students' Social Self Perceptions.
DREEM is a questionnaire with 50 items that assess five domains [3]: students' perceptions of learning, 12 items, and maximum score 48; students' perceptions of teachers, 11 items, maximum score 44; students' academic self-perception, 8 items, maximum score 32; students' perceptions of atmosphere, 12 items, maximum score 48; and students' social self-perception, 7 items, maximum score 28.
In terms of students' perceptions of atmosphere, five items received mean scores greater than two (Table 2).
For instance, teaching, supervision and training are recurring themes, as are perceptions of atmosphere, emotional climate and social support.
