Virtual site visits in Construction Management education: A practical alternative to physical site visits

Construction site visits and hands-on experiences are among the important instruments for educators in construction engineering and management to provide students with valuable knowledge and more engaging learning experiences. However, in addition to its existing logistical challenges, the COVID-19 pandemic has made site visits even more inaccessible as in-person classes and site visits moved to distant learning or got canceled. In a distance education system, conducting a physical site visit is not an easy task. This study focuses on the use of virtual site visits in construction and experiencing virtual hands-on training using immersive videos. Three types of video formats were used as the main content delivery methods in this pilot study namely, 2D flat, 360-degree, and 180-degree 3D videos. This method was adopted and tested in two courses that were previously face-to-face, which were then shifted to an online format due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The use of immersive videos gave students who would not have the ability to experience a physical site visit, the opportunity to experience the construction site environment and receive educational direction during a pre-recorded, hands-on, immersive video project. The goal of this study is to understand students’ experience with the provided technology, necessary improvement, implications for future research, and the potential implementations of this technology. A costume set of questionnaires was designed to retrieve students’ feedback on their experience which includes a comparison of different content delivery methods and four other study measures: knowledge retention, sense of presence, user experience, and overall satisfaction. Multiple statistical analyses were conducted on the collected data to provide both descriptive details and further insight into the study parameters and their relationship with each other and between different parameters.