A serious game for lean construction education enabled by Internet of Things

Previous studies have shown that the learning performance of students greatly increases once personal experiences are made possible. In construction education, few serious gaming environments are available to boost the students’ thirst of discovery and interaction. As of now, theoretical content like lean principles is often taught by frontal classroom style teaching. This paper describes the development and preliminary testing of a first of a kind serious gaming platform that introduces construction engineering and management students to hands-on learning. The novelty of the developed platform is that it combines the previously separate methods of Building Information Modeling (BIM), Internet of things (IoT), and Lean Construction (LC) in one (serious) game. Technical aspects of the platform and results to its evaluation in a classroom setting are presented. The added value to learning is shown as part of learning curves automatically generated from the players’ data. While such data were previously not available, some still existing limitations and an outlook present the next steps in establishing such serious games in construction education.