Using Immersive Storytelling to Attract Students to the Construction Field
Publication: Computing in Civil Engineering 2021
ABSTRACT
The need to increase the number of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students has been stressed, yet the growing number of students still fails the national demand for the STEM workforce. This mismatch between supply and demand is also found in the construction field. Storytelling can be a potential solution to this problem, as stories are believable, rememberable, and entertaining. Storytelling can allow students to experience the career planning and decision-making processes and embrace the possibility of themselves joining the construction field. This paper introduced the creation and development process of the immersive stories and assessed the influence of immersive storytelling on students’ attitudes towards the construction field based on gender groups. The results can enhance our understanding of immersive storytelling’s potential influence in motivating students and ultimately attracting them to the construction field. It was found that immersive storytelling had a positive influence on both male and female students. Moreover, it was observed that females’ aspirations to achieve a career in the construction field before and after the immersive stories were both significantly lower than males’.
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Computing in Civil Engineering 2021
Pages: 1393 - 1400
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Published online: May 24, 2022
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