What are the key lessons learned from developing the course?
Focus on Hands-on teaching as students prefer learning-by-doing instead of learning-by-hearing. Active learning is more fun for them with respect to a passive learning.
Interdisciplinarity as BIM explicitly address interdisciplinary work. Allocate time to setup teams, define roles and team management.
What are the challenges faced during the implementation and conduction of the pilot course?
Limited time and overall course duration: At the beginning of the course, all the students had minimal knowledge of the BIM methodology, which was reflected in criticism from the students about the limited time available to assimilate the content. This suggests the possibility of reorganizing the duration of the course. The course intensity was a challenge and the team considered that, in the future, the course will be diluted i.e. divided into basic and advanced.
Interdisciplinary group work requires more time to be allocated for defining roles and responsibilities according to the BIM workflow. This adjustment will clarify the importance of team structure, task assignments for each team member, and methods of coordination and communication for the students.
What are the necessary key prerequisites to develop a course in BIM?
The course development team must have a thorough understanding of BIM fundamentals, proficient software skills, and extensive knowledge of BIM standards and codes.
Maintain constant contact with the industry and professional associations to ensure the course reflects current BIM practices and technologies.
Collaborate with certification bodies (e.g. buildingSMART) to align the course with established industry certification standards.
Develop profound knowledge about higher education institution (HEI) course design, student requirements, definition and estimation of workload, and teaching concepts.
What needs to be ensured among the team with regard to develop the syllabus and course materials?
Recognize that many students may be new to BIM; design the course to explain complex concepts in simple, accessible language to facilitate understanding for beginners.
Maintain continuous communication and open feedback channels within the development team, utilizing tools like instant messaging groups for rapid response to critical issues.
Adopt a consistent teaching approach across all lessons, allocating time for a brief recap of concepts from previous sessions to reinforce learning and help students familiarize themselves with the syllabus and course materials interactively.
Facilitate open discussions and the exchange of teaching concepts and experiences. Provide an overview and comparison of study regulations.
What are the challenges faced while using the course materials and applications?
Complex applications and/or resistance to the implementation of BIM information management (e.g. preparation and adaptation of a BIM execution plan (BEP)). Student groups that poorly implemented the BEP struggled with executing project tasks and coordinating effectively between different disciplines.
Some students found difficult to summarize all the steps of the applications. This challenge was solved by doing a quick recap of the procedure at the beginning and at the end of the lesson. Additional class hours were granted to the students in need of further clarifications.
The main difficulty faced by the students was the project coordination, emphasizing the need to concentrate efforts in this area, particularly concerning project location references and IFC export.
Did you identify missing or inadequately covered aspects within the course materials and applications that need to be improved?
An initial blocking points was considered the extensive list of acronyms (e.g. OIR, AIR, PIR, PIM, BEP, bSDD, ...) and their intensive use during the course presentation. Nevertheless, with enough practice within the course and application part, by the end of the course, students were fully up to date with all acronyms.
In addition, students requested that the content be presented in the local language to clarify a series of complex topics. The issue was solved after the translation of the course content.
Does the structure of the designed course need to be updated? If yes, what need to be changed or rearrange?
The course content was developed to be delivered in a face-to-face format, but post-COVID-19, education is heading towards a blended approach (digital courses + hands-on workshops). This indicates the need for a follow-up project to enhance the reach and effectiveness of this developed course.
To emphasize the BIM workflow, interdisciplinarity must be ensured and should always be preferred. In the case of interdisciplinary group work, sufficient time must be allocated to define roles and responsibilities.
As BIM is a relatively new topic that is constantly evolving (e.g. the IFC standard was already updated ISO 16739-1:2018 => ISO 16739-1:2024) the course need to be able to grow and addapt to these changes. By design, the course has a modular structure that should allow for easy update and extension.
What aspect of the course had positive impact on students?
Students were impressed by the software interoperability and by the opportunity to gather all the relevant features in only one model (i.e. federation). Some insights on 3D printing by using BIM models also raised a lot of interest.
By the end of the course, students were able to understand the BIM approach for project design and, especially, the importance of the different BIM roles for successful coordination in collaborative work.
The students understood the functionalities that a tool must offer to enable the development of a BIM project. This meant that they weren't restricted to a specific software program and could choose any program they wanted for the course assessment, for example.