Carrasquillo, A., Pradhananga, N., and Eraso, M.
The 53rd Annual Associated Schools of Conference International Conference, Seattle, WA, April 5-8, 2017.
Publication year: 2017

This paper reports findings from a pilot summer camp program organized to promote construction-related career, especially construction technology related career, in high school students. The camp introduced concepts from Programming, Virtual Reality, and Construction to students who had little to no experience in these fields. The two-week course followed a Project Based Learning curriculum, which was chosen to increase relevant and deep learning in addition to motivation in the students to learn the concepts. The project that spearheaded the program required the students to design and construct a building in a virtual environment using a programming language. To construct this building, the students had to learn to program, be able to use virtual reality environment proficiently and implement concepts from outside the class curriculum of the course, be able to use spatial visualization to design their structure, and collaborate with each other in order to achieve success. The objective of the program was to entice tech-savvy new generation towards construction, which will eventually expedite technological adaptations in the construction industry. The challenges, findings and recommendations from the program are discussed in this paper.