Construction Research Congress 2020
A Review of Virtual Field Trip Applications in Construction Education
Publication: Construction Research Congress 2020: Safety, Workforce, and Education
ABSTRACT
The construction field trip is an interactive and essential component of construction education, and its significance is widely recognized by educators and researchers in the construction domain. However, due to its real-world nature, there are several challenges that limit the extensive employment of this teaching approach. A few examples of such spatiotemporal challenges are time conflict, large class sizes, short site visit duration, and not being able to see or hear in a crowded or noisy environment. Construction educators and researchers have been using virtual field trips to support traditional field trips or offer an alternative when these learning opportunities are not available. This paper presents the current status of virtual field trip application in construction education while specifically focusing on the construction subject areas, technology use, and learning assessment techniques used in those virtual field trips. The review shows that VFT has been mostly integrated with construction courses in fundamental and introductory level, and their learning objectives are mainly general and broad without a specific focus on certain construction aspects or techniques. The technologies to develop VFTs can be categorized into captured-reality using regular or 360 images or videos and virtual reality using computer-generated simulation of reality. Advantages and disadvantages of both technologies are discussed. Interview and questionnaires were mainly used to assess the reviewed VFT as a learning tool, and it is reported that in the majority of those papers, the feedback from students is mostly positive. These outcomes provide construction educators and researchers insights on successful implementation and potential challenges of virtual field trips in construction education.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1821852.
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Published In
Construction Research Congress 2020: Safety, Workforce, and Education
Pages: 782 - 790
Editors: Mounir El Asmar, Ph.D., Arizona State University, David Grau, Ph.D., Arizona State University, and Pingbo Tang, Ph.D., Arizona State University
ISBN (Online): 978-0-7844-8287-2
Copyright
© 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Published online: Nov 9, 2020
Published in print: Nov 9, 2020
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