Successful education for AEC professionals: case study of applying immersive game-like virtual reality interfaces

Farzad Pour Rahimian, Tomasz Arciszewski, Jack Goulding

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

39 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Background:
Global competition and the transdisciplinary nature of evolving Architecture-Engineering-Construction (AEC) activities makes it progressively important to educate new AEC professionals with appropriate skill sets. These skills include the ability and capability of not only developing routine projects, but also delivering novel design solutions and construction processes (some of which may be unknown), to feasible, surprising, or potentially patentable solutions. For example, despite recent innovations in immersive visualisation technologies and tele-presence decision-support toolkits, the AEC sector as a whole has not yet fully understood these technologies, nor embraced them as an enabler.

Methods:
Given this, this paper proposes a new approach for delivering education and training to address this shortcoming. This approach focuses on doing traditional (routine) work with creative thinking in order to address these challenges. This rationale is based on the principles of Successful Education as a new paradigm for engineering education, which is inspired by the Theory of Successful Intelligence, by the Medici Effect and Leonardo da Vinci’s Seven Principles. The paper presents the educating AEC professionals is presented the AEC sector. The Theory of Successful Intelligence and its three forms of intelligence (Practical, Analytical, and Creative), are supported by lessons learned from the Renaissance, including the Medici Effect and da Vinci’s Seven Principles.

Results:
Based on these theoretical pillars, a new approach to educating AEC professionals is presented with a proof-of-concept prototype that uses a game-like virtual reality (VR) visualisation interface supported by Mind Mapping is introduced as an exemplar.

Conclusion:
The developed interface in this study applies Game Theory to non-collocated design teams in accordance with Social Sciences Theory (social rules) and Behavioural Science Theory (decision making). It contributes by supporting new insights into AEC actor involvement, pedagogy, organisational behaviour, and the social constructs that support decision making.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)4
JournalVisualization in Engineering
Volume2
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2014

Keywords

  • Training
  • Successful education
  • Pedagogy
  • Medici effect
  • da Vinci Principles
  • Visualisation

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Successful education for AEC professionals: case study of applying immersive game-like virtual reality interfaces'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this