Effects of building information modeling prior knowledge on applying virtual reality in construction education: lessons from a comparison study

Applying building information modeling (BIM) and virtual reality (VR) in construction education is an effective way to achieve better study motivation, learnability, creativity, and observation of the real world. However, whether different levels of BIM prior knowledge affect students' VR experimental learning, if at all, has not been examined. Therefore, this study employs a teaching intervention experiment to access the VR learning process based on the BIM prior knowledge. A total of 47 students, from the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, participated in the experiment. They were grouped according to whether they had taken the prior BIM tutorial section, with 23 participants in the group having completed the tutorial and 24 participants in the group that had not. Experiment materials were created and rendered via Autodesk Revit and Iris VR; the materials supported three tasks related to the underground design review scenarios and three other tasks about site planning review scenarios. After the experiment, a comparison study was done to discuss their differences based on VR task performances and satisfaction. The results revealed that the BIM prior knowledge mediated both the two-dimensional and three-dimensional navigations when students performed the tasks. Moreover, the relationship differences within the satisfactions showed that BIM prior knowledge effectively affected the learning outcomes. In conclusion, the comparison study implies that students' BIM prior knowledge is efficacious in the students' VR task performance and their VR satisfaction from cognitive and memory perspectives.