Gamified building sites provide safer, more accessible learning opportunities for UniSA students

Construction education is being transformed with immersive virtual learning environments, allowing University of South Australia students to safely and freely navigate building sites and connect theory to practice.

The virtual site visits create a realistic digital environment where architecture and construction students can explore the complexity of construction sites from a first-person perspective, like a video game.

Through the UniSA-developed SiteSeer program, students experience the full fabrication process and learn to translate two-dimensional plans into three-dimensional structures, bridging the gap between plans and built reality.

UniSA Senior Lecturer: Architecture Dr Sean Pickersgill says the development of the gamified platform was born out of the logistical challenges often faced by academics when co-ordinating physical construction site visits as part of students’ practical learning.

“Organising physical site visits for students is challenging because there’s no way to ensure that all students receive the same experience without organising a site visit for the entire class. This is where co-ordination challenges arise because there’s no guarantee that a construction site’s schedule will align with the students' learning progress,” he says.

“Then there’s the organisational complexity of arranging student access to construction sites which requires significant liaison with builders and there’s also safety and liability concerns with having students on site.

“There’s also the difficulty of students’ travelling to building sites, sometimes outside of regular teaching hours. For some students it’s impractical, especially if they rely on public transport or have long commute times, and because of that in the past we’ve observed higher absentee rates as students are reluctant to attend.

In response to these complexities, four UniSA academics developed an original digital platform, called OnSite, in 2015. Capturing five stages of the construction process – site set out, slab, single-storey wall framing, double-storey wall framing and roof framing.

The project evolved over the next decade, with more than 1000 first year students engaging in the gamified platform as part of a first-year introductory course on Australian construction practices.

In 2024, OnSite advanced into a new digital model, SiteSeer, containing more than 70 distinct phases of the construction process of a small, double-storey studio. A mixture of timber frame and brick veneer, the new structure demonstrates a broad scope of construction phases a first-year student is expected to understand.

The newest current version achieves an even greater level of simulated realism with detailed elements such as bins, vegetation and tools providing an additional aspect of authenticity to the experience.

Dr Pickersgill says construction and architecture students observing real-world methods echoes the apprenticeship model where trade skills are learned alongside skilled craftspeople.

“Tertiary architecture and building degrees face challenges in providing this first-hand experience due to time restraints – but this foundational knowledge is critical,” he says. “SiteSeer is allowing students to explore every detail of the environment and gain an in-depth insight to each building stage, all within one seamless platform.

“We’re diversifying and elevating learning in the digital age.”

For more information on SiteSeer, read the research paper: Sean Pickersgill, Andrew Lymn-Penning, Damian Madigan, and Darcy Holmes. 2024. Virtual Site Visits through Gamification for AEC Students: Perspectives on Practice. In SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 Educator's Forum (SA '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 2, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1145/3680533.3697062

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Contact for interview: Dr Sean Pickersgill, Senior Lecturer: Architecture, UniSA E: Sean.Pickersgill@unisa.edu.au
Media contact: Melissa Keogh, Communications Officer, UniSA M: +61 406 659 154 E: Melissa.Keogh@unisa.edu.au