Utilizing a Collaborative Virtual Reality Environment as a Training Tool for Construction Students

Students graduating from a Construction Management degree or similar entering the industry must know how to properly manage time, materials, personnel and equipment on complex construction projects. Unfortunately, in most cases construction students are not exposed enough to realistic construction project experience during their time at today’s universities, leaving them with a preparation that does not fully realize their capability to face the challenges of real-world project management. The purpose of this paper is to describe the results of a pilot project that was carried out in order to address this problem. The project involved designing and creating an interactive learning experience within the Second Life virtual reality environment that gives construction students a realistic experience with construction event sequences and resource management. This project merged the use of virtual reality environments to simulate real-life construction projects with the perspective of using gaming tools as genuine means of education in the university setting. Once a playable interactive learning experience was completed it was tested with the help of a small sample of construction students. Due to the visual interactivity and gaming style, it was hypothesized that the use of a virtual reality environment such as Second Life to design and create an interactive learning experience would prove to be very useful for construction students to learn about and gain experiences in project scheduling. In support of this hypothesis, it was predicted that the results of the experiment would show that the construction students who participated did in fact learn something and gained construction experience from their time using the interactive learning experience. While the technical questions were inconclusive regarding whether or not the students learned anything, the opinion questions showed a very positive outlook. The participants, who each reported that they gained most of their construction experience from onsite work, unanimously agreed that they gained realistic construction project experience from their time using the interactive learning experience and would be interested in using virtual reality environments in the future.