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Virtual site visits are increasingly becoming a viable educational tool for educators to supplement or replace traditional visits when these are challenged by logistical issues, inaccessibility, or safety hazards. Recent research has explored the integration of theory-based learning strategies, such as collaborative problem-solving and multimedia learning, in online construction site visits to support construction students’ collaborative skill development and learning effectiveness. However, there remains a lack of understanding of how to guide students systematically from conceptual knowledge to more complex, hands-on, or procedural knowledge, which often leads to a fragmented learning experience in current online site visit designs. This study aims to integrate active learning approaches (i.e., systematic learning progression) into online site visits to facilitate students’ development of situated knowledge. In this project, a collaborative online site visit focused on building mechanical systems was created, where students worked in pairs to achieve four specific learning objectives, progressing from conceptual to procedural knowledge regarding building mechanical systems. The findings provide insights into the integration of systematic learning progression within virtual collaborative spaces for online site visits and demonstrate the effectiveness of such site visits in supporting students’ situated knowledge. 

Site visits or field trips are widely recognized by construction educators to engage students in active learning, supplement traditional lessons, and achieve better student learning experiences. However, site visits pose significant logistical and accessibility challenges for educational institutions and teachers, limiting the number of students who can benefit from them. Moreover, the restrictions on site visits have widened recently, as the reality of COVID-19 public health concerns have compelled instructors to fast-transition to online course delivery, canceling most site visits. The purpose of this study is to present construction students with online site visits to supplement contextualized learning in risky, unsafe, or impossible-to-achieve situations. In this project, Mozilla Hubs® was used to establish a virtual collaborative environment that resembled a real-world site visit to a building facility. A pilot study (i.e., a plan-reading assessment) was employed within the virtual environment that provided affordances involving an in-depth learning experience through collaborative communication. The findings demonstrate that virtual collaborative site visits give unique chances to deliver spatiotemporal contexts of sites online and provide an effective remote alternative when these learning opportunities are unavailable. 

Site visits or field trips are an integral part of construction management education, providing students with experiential learning of jobsite conditions. However, these types of real-world opportunities are difficult to obtain within the current educational framework based on classroom instruction. To expose students to jobsite spatiotemporal contexts (spatial, temporal, or social situations), field trips must be organized at locations that are often inaccessible, dangerous, or expensive to reach. To address field trip barriers, this research proposes the use of iVisit—a proof-of-concept platform for guided interactive site visits that leverages 360-degree panoramas and virtual humans. In this paper, the technical requirements for the creation of digital site visit experiences and resulting educational platform are explained in detail. Additionally, a pilot study was conducted to assess the iVisit platform in terms of usability, presence, and student knowledge gains. A masonry materials’ site visit learning experience was designed and tested with 10 participants at introductory level construction courses. It was found that students perceived the iVisit guided tour as easy to use (SUS Usability Score – Mean = 86%; STD = 8.8%) and highly realistic (SUS Presence Score – Mean = 68.4%; STD = 14.4%). However, students answer approximately one-third of the presented knowledge questions correctly (Student Knowledge Score – Mean = 31.7%; STD = 25%). These outcomes in student knowledge gains were linked to low image quality in the 360-degree captures and augmented pictures within the digital site. Supporting feedback provided by the study participants suggested that future improvements to iVisit require higher image quality and some refinements to its user-interfaces to increase presence and knowledge gains.