Toward deep impacts of BIM on education

Abstract

Building information models (BIM) provide a way to represent buildings and communicate about them. In teaching engineering, we also need representations of buildings and are communicating knowledge about them. While teaching engineering we refer to the very same real-world objects that have an explicit conceptualization in BIM. This explicit conceptualization did not exist in the age when design communication relied on drawings and documents. The question that this paper asks is this: due to BIM, communication in the industry has changed. Should communication of engineering knowledge – teaching – change as well and how? While much has been written about teaching BIM and incorporating BIM into the curricula, this paper is exploring the general impact of BIM on engineering education. It grounds earlier work (Turk, 2018) on insights from pedagogy. Five scenarios of the interplay between BIM-influenced engineering communication and teaching are presented. The paper argues that ignoring BIM may create a cognitive dissonance between academic learning and industrial work. We are finding that the impact of BIM is twofold: vertically there is a need to establish a reference between knowledge concepts (in teaching building) and information objects (in building information models). Horizontally BIM is an integration technology that allows for a more holistic design and planning. Both the language of individual courses as well as cross references and synergies among courses should change. A “T” style structure of the courses around BIM is proposed as a basis for integrated curriculum. Pedagogical approaches based on deep learning, model based learning and project based learning are suggested.

Keywords

engineering education / building information modelling / engineering communication / curriculum development

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