Abstract:

Learning practical-professional contents at the university has proven to be difficult and often not successful, as employers report regarding employed graduates’ knowledge and skills. In architecture and construction engineering, construction on-site visits are usual professional oriented learning activities. These visits imply several challenging issues: industry-university collaboration, safety insurance and equipment provision, transport, and difficult learning environments due to noise and risks. Digital visual technologies evolution and recent contexts like pandemic lockdowns have promoted the development and application of new alternatives. This paper presents the first version of a new website platform that allows students to interactively travel through the time and space of a building process. This visual digital environment is enhanced by learning material like notes and questionnaires. This research project compares the strengths and weaknesses between this new learning platform and on-site visits. Comparing learning activities is a crucial multicriteria complex problem, which depends on factors related to these alternatives, the parties involved and their context. This comparison follows a model that combines a literature review, focus groups, the revised Bloom taxonomy, SWOT technique, the multi-criteria decision method MIVES, Delphi method, Knapsack problem and neuroscience applied to learning processes. This creates a model that focuses on the learning process while also considering cost and environmental issues. This comparison is based on data from undergraduate and master students’ populations at different university study years who have done either on-site visits, used this new platform or both. Results obtained confirm some of the alternatives’ expected weaknesses and strengths while detecting unforeseen threats and opportunities.

Keywords:

Online active learning, Bloom taxonomy, neuroscience for education, SWOT technique, MIVES, Delphi.