Experiential and Project-based Learning in BIM for Sustainable Living with Tiny Solar Houses

Abstract

The tiny house movement represents a unique building initiative that aims to reduce the environmental and financial impacts of modern living. This paper introduces the integration of a tiny house competition project into an undergraduate construction management curriculum, and investigates the role of building information modeling (BIM) in facilitating sustainable living design and construction as well as student learning using an experiential and project-based pedagogy. As BIM is prevailing across the global design and construction industry, higher education has been striving on developing effective pedagogy to cultivate students’ competency in BIM. Most recently, the emphasis of BIM education has been transforming from software training to problem-solving in the context of project execution and management. Therefore, experiential and project-based learning seems to be a promising option for BIM education. This paper highlights the synergistic BIM usage in the tiny solar house project with broad student participation and comprehensive inclusion of both lower and upper division undergraduate construction management courses. The tiny solar house project provides the desired pedagogical construct that fosters active student learning engagement in attaining BIM knowledge and developing problem-solving skills with BIM at multiple phases that span from the inception of design, to construction and eventually the occupancy and operation.