Development of ecocampus: A prototype system for sustainable building design education
Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: SUMMARY: Students in architectural engineering and related disciplines need to develop critical design skills to be successful in their post-collegiate careers. Among these critical skills are the abilities to: create possible design concepts to address a given functional or programming requirement; understand what those concepts will look like in the context of an existing building or project site; and assess the benefits and deficiencies of the design concepts to determine the best possible design strategy. Existing technologies have been used to help students develop these skills through a mobile computer-based prototype, called ecoCampus. This computer application allowed students to: explore sustainable retrofit design possibilities for an existing building; visualize those design possibilities with marker-based augmented reality; and receive tailored performance feedback about the designs through a basic simulation game interface. This paper discusses the general workflow for creating this type of tool and the specific steps that were followed to develop ecoCampus. These steps include: identifying educational objectives; developing a list of functional requirements; developing the workflow for the educational design module; determining the development infrastructure for creating the application; developing the tool; and refining the initial prototype through iteration. This workflow is offered as a process that can successfully lead to a functional prototype as evidenced by the creation of ecoCampus, and can be used by future developers for creating similar technological tools applied to various educational
Authors: Steven K. Ayer, John Messner, Chimay Anumba
Institution: Pennsylvania State University
Language: English
Subfield: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W1781329361