**5. Conclusions**

Currently, the perceptions of overall comfort in general, and at schools in particular, are incomplete or biased, often leading to failure when carrying out HVAC interventions, or in prior installed air-conditioned classrooms, where students still declare that they are not comfortable. In educational buildings, the approach that engages students in POE provides researchers with highly contextualized information about which elements are most influential in global (thermal and environmental) comfort, helping the analysis to be done more accurately and thinking about the factors that maximize the performance solutions.

The adapted POE methods motivated the students: feeling involved, they seemed excited to share their opinion and propose improvements. When feeling empowered, they create real opportunities for change, even discussing it with their families and close friends to explore new possibilities. Leveraging this motivation offers a real opportunity for change.

On the other hand, the application of techniques or methods that promote the active participation of users (belonging to the Participatory Action Research (PAR)) implies reflection on a certain topic or issue, common for a collective (pupils in class or school). This reflection leads to deepen the problems' roots, so environmental comfort misinformation, ignorance or lack of autonomy in comfort-related device control could be detected. Group debates contributed to build a common and aware discourse that tried to fix those gaps, that also may be communicated to decision-makers (teachers, school managers and directors, etc.) as part of a potential intervention strategy.

On the other hand, using the qualitative participatory technique based on drawings and group debates, insights independent of this kind of research are unveiled, not before considered from researchers, that could result in solutions that not only conduct possibly energy-saving but also cheaper and faster environmental comfort-related interventions, since real needs and lacks are soon-detected, revealed and analyzed from the users' experiences, to the researchers and intervenors.

The solutions that students gave, which covered a wide range of issues, also served to address the heat adaptation concern and even to raise awareness about energy savings.

Taking into account starting points that do not cost money, such as the position of the tables in the classroom or the study of the hours in which the different subjects must be taught, including access to the operation of the windows, blinds and lights can contribute to improving comfort in spaces. In addition, there are other adaptive solutions like changing your hairstyle or clothes. There are even improvement proposals that cost less and can greatly influence the microclimate, such as planting trees. Classroom ventilation was determined as an important element of indoor air quality and thermal comfort.

This research has provided information to the design community that is not generally obtained through Post-Occupational Evaluation (POE) but is essential in addressing design quality, since the approach gives importance to the people who really use the school buildings.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, S.D.-A.; J.F.-A. and T.C.-V.; data curation, S.D.-A. and J.F.-A.; formal analysis, S.D.-A., J.F.-A., M.M.G. and T.C.-V.; funding acquisition, S.D.-A. and J.F.-A.; investigation, S.D.-A., J.F.-A. and T.C.-V.; methodology, S.D.-A., J.F.-A. and T.C.-V.; project administration, S.D.-A.; resources, S.D.-A. and J.F.-A.; supervision, S.D.-A.; Validation, S.D.-A., J.F.-A. and T.C.-V.; visualization, J.F.-A.; writing—original draft, S.D.-A., J.F.-A., M.M.G. and T.C.-V. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by Data collection and study for the development of an Energy Efficiency Assessment Prototype of Active Participation Pilot Centers, grant number 3620/0451.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
