Immersive Teaching of AEC Construction Details using Virtual Reality

Designing basic construction details of buildings is a fundamental part in the course of educating students of architecture and civil engineering during their first year. To meet current challenges in education, this research is concerned with investigating the benefits of advancing VR technology for knowledge gain and supporting the understanding process for the students for teaching construction details. The objective of this research is twofold:(i) develop a VR-workflow for construction detail analysis, and (ii) conduct a survey amongst lecturers, students and laypersons to measure the acceptance, ergonomics and learning impact of the developed VR application for a prototypical construction detail. This is investigated through a VR-demonstrator, which comprises of an interactive 3D model of a construction detail of a basement wall and two different modes (inspection and quiz mode). To verify our hypothesis of a significant benefit in students’ learning through the interactive and intuitive nature of VR, a pilot study with a panel consisting of 41 participants was conducted. A control group used 2D paper drawings of the basement construction, which was labelled exactly as in the VR model. It was concluded that for participants with a professional background in the AEC industry, there was no significant advantage of using VR over 2D drawings. For students without much prior knowledge VR learning was more effective. The results support the authors’ core assumption for the use of VR in teaching: the presentation of contextual 3D models to illustrate content is a promising approach. To that end, VR technology will augment traditional teaching formats …