Abstract

To enhance the engagement of Civil Engineering students and encourage active learning, a virtual construction site investigation game is developed in the present paper. 3D construction site environment is built based on BIM models and relevant objects common on construction sites are created to enhance the realistic. Navigation and Interactions are developed to enable the students to explore the virtual sites freely and get instant feedbacks. Different modules, such as Questions and Tasks, are developed to exam how well the students master the domain-related knowledge. Unity, a cross-platform game engine, is used as the development platform for this research project. The architecture, mechanism and the implementation are described in detail in this paper. A pedagogical methodology for improving the quality of learning is thus developed by transforming traditional instructional delivery techniques into technology-based active learning. Students’ engagement in the learning process is improved by establishing a contextual connection between ordinary textbook materials and technologies that students use in their daily routines.

This new approach enables students to interact, and learn abstract topics in engineering design and construction method. The effectiveness of this active learning method is investigated by the feedback from two groups of students using a questionnaire. The potential benefits of the proposed research are: enhanced understanding of complicated structures; better accessibility to more construction site virtually; more convenient and flexible time for learning practices; and safer site visit with this pre-training tool.

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