Author(s):
Using Online Virtual Site Visits to Enhance Students’ Collaborative Problem-Solving in Construction Engineering and Management
Need: Virtual site visits are increasingly becoming a viable educational tool for educators to supplement or replace traditional visits when they have logistical challenges, are inaccessible, or create hazards for students. Many STEM disciplines multidisciplinary such as Construction requires constant collaboration and problem-solving among experts for successful completion of scientific, design, or manufacturing tasks. Emerging research is exploring the integration of collaboration and communication affordances within virtual site visits to closely resemble real-world, physical site interactions and spatiotemporal contexts of sites properly to allow students to observe and comprehend such complex projects. However, there is a lack of understanding regarding how collaborative communication affordances within virtual collaborative spaces are effectively integrated into online virtual site visits to deliver educational content and foster collaborative problem-solving experiences. This study aims to integrate active learning approaches into online virtual site visits to facilitate students in development of situated knowledge and provide communication affordances to scaffold collaborative problem-solving skills.
Guiding Questions:
• How do the communication affordances of online virtual site visits facilitate collaborative problem-solving skills of construction students?
• What impact does a systematic progression from declarative to procedural knowledge in supporting scaffolded learning within construction online virtual site visits?
Outcomes: In this project, a collaborative online virtual site visit focused on a building mechanical system was created. Students work as pairs to achieve four specific learning objectives regarding building mechanical systems in such site visit. An observational experiment was conducted to assess students’ collaborative problem-solving practices and how students were using communication affordances to collaboratively solve problem. The findings indicated students effectively engaged in the shared environment, successfully accomplishing their collaborative tasks by enabling them to comprehend their partners’ spatial positions and ensuring alignment in their collaborative efforts. The virtual environment’s communication features proved beneficial for discussions, pinpointing, depicting solutions, and enhanced comprehension. Furthermore, a between-subject experiment is planned to investigate the impact of a systematic learning progression from declarative to procedural knowledge on supporting students’ knowledge construction. It is anticipated that the results will further our understanding of online virtual site visits that include a systematic learning progression and how these types of scaffolded approaches can foster students’ learning compared to those without such progression frameworks.
Broader Impacts: Ultimately, the findings of this research will offer insights into the integration of active learning approaches, collaborative problem-based learning, and systematic learning progression, within virtual collaborative spaces for online site visits. This research has the potential to advance current understanding of the effectiveness of online virtual site visits for enhancing students’ collaborative problem-solving skills and situated knowledge.
Coauthors
Masoud Gheisari, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL
