Abstract
This Technical Note serves as one of the first review-based studies by analyzing existing trends of incorporating building information modeling (BIM) into the higher education of architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC)-related disciplines. Assisted by a scientometric review approach, this study identified mainstream journals and conference proceedings publishing BIM educational research outputs and analyzed existing research keywords. The results show that the Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice was ranked as the top journal measured by the number of publications and the total citations received by all articles related to BIM education. However, the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management was the journal with the highest average influence per article despite its small number of publications in BIM education. The keyword analysis through visualized mapping and quantitative analysis revealed that existing BIM educational studies had focused more on construction-related disciplines. Discipline-specific pedagogical activities were reported (e.g., interactive display in construction education), and there had been educational efforts to bridge different AEC disciplines through integrated and collaborative approaches. Several research trends were identified following the keyword analysis, such as the need of incorporating BIM at the program level by extending from a single course (e.g., quantity surveying) and integrating BIM with other digital technologies (e.g., drone). This study reports the state of BIM education literature by providing an overview of the latest trends of adopting BIM in the AEC education. Based on the current review, some continuous work in BIM education is foreseen, including educational innovation addressing both technical and managerial aspects of BIM, as well as the interdisciplinary collaboration to reduce the fragmentation among AEC disciplines.
Highlights
Building Information Modeling (BIM), as one of the main digital technologies being applied in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry, has become one of the main themes in the AEC higher education sector
Education in the higher education is important based on the facts that: (1) BIM is one of the key technologies in the global AEC industry movement towards digitalization to achieve improved project efficiency; (2) educators or academia have the mission to update the AEC
BIM as the digital platform from the single course level to the program or curriculum level involving BIM-standalone and BIM-embedded courses; (2) collaborative nature of BIM to reduce the fragmentation among different AEC disciplines through new pedagogical strategies; (3) information sharing between
Summary
Building Information Modeling (BIM), as one of the main digital technologies being applied in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry, has become one of the main themes in the AEC higher education sector. Recent review-based studies (e.g., Chen et al, 2019; Zheng et al, 2019) in civil engineering education revealed the trend of adopting BIM in the curriculum or other education activities. Jin et al (2019c) suggested that education or training should become one of the main themes in BIM-related research for construction engineering and management. Some existing pedagogical examples (e.g., Jin et al, 2018a; Zhang et al, 2018) of BIM could be found, so far there has not been a review-based work to summarize the trend of incorporating BIM in the AEC higher education.
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