A paper "Onsite and Online: Making space to enhance learning for construction industry professionals" by Dr Chris Landorf (The University of Queensland), Associate Professor Graham Brewer, Kim Maund (The University of Newcastle), and Stephen Ward (University of South Australia), will be presented by Dr Landorf at the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia Conference 2015, 6-9 July 2015 in Melbourne.
ABSTRACT:
A recurring theme in higher education is how to address the imbalance between theory and practice and produce graduates who are ready to engage immediately and effectively in their chosen professional settings. In a competitive industry such as construction, practical innovations have a tendency to be retained as proprietary knowledge, while the body of professional knowledge remains static, standardised and theoretical. Compounding the theory-practice imbalance is the dangerous nature of the industry. Student access to construction sites is problematic further limiting the ability to contextualise learning as a realistic multi-disciplinary problem-based experience. Much has been made recently of the advantages of work-integrated learning as a means to apply and learn disciplinary knowledge and skills in a real-world context (Billett 2009, Smith 2012). However, tensions exist between the opportunities afforded by the workplace, and the demands of placing large student cohorts in that workplace while ensuring pedagogical rigour (Lester and Costley 2010). This suggests opportunities exist to explore alternative approaches to providing the benefits of work-integrated learning through simulated real-life contexts.
This paper reports on interim findings from an OLT funded project that aims to develop an interactive inter-disciplinary digital learning environment based on time-lapse 3-dimensional visualisation (a 4D environment) and other resources associated with the design and construction of a major construction project, the University of Queensland’s Advanced Engineering Building. The learning environment will provides a realistic 4D context for the development of simulated problems that activate student learning (Francis and Shannon 2013) using a problem-based learning approach to enhance critical thinking skills (Kek and Huijser 2011).