Being able to perform an effective design review is a fundamental skill that every design or construction student should possess. Performing a design review requires critical thinking, analysis, and communication skills. To support the acquisition of these skills, this study investigated the impact of a virtual reality game, the design review simulator (DRS), in a classroom environment. To assess the impact of the game, the authors performed a crossover experiment with 120 students. The students were split into groups and were asked to perform design reviews in two treatment conditions, 2D drawings or the DRS. A knowledge test was administered at the end of different treatments to collect quantitative data on the students' performance. Results from this research indicate that the DRS supported students in identifying a higher number of design mistakes. Furthermore, students that played with the DRS after performing 2D drawings reviews scored significantly higher in the knowledge test. The research results contribute to the growing knowledge base on the implementation of VR in the classroom and in supporting students in meeting learning objectives related to design review skills. In particular, the research illustrated that the benefits of VR found in the construction industry in terms of improved communication, user involvement, and feedback collection could be translated into the classroom environment. 1. INTRODUCTION An effective design review process is critical to the successful delivery of a construction project. Many of the cost, schedule and quality-related problems encountered during construction

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When students initially begin their pursuit of a degree in Construction Management (CMGT), the first CMGT courses they take address a wide breadth of foundational concepts. At the time of taking these entry level courses, most of these new CMGT students have little to no experience in the construction industry. This lack of experience presents a significant challenge for these students to understand the relevancy and real-world application of the concepts they are being taught. Often times these entry level courses utilize a traditional teaching method, where the instructor delivers the concepts to students via lectures. In turn, students focus on memorizing the delivered information, with little understanding of how the information they are taught is used in the construction industry. In this paper the author will demonstrate how a social constructivist approach was used in an entry level CMGT course to design a group project. This group project required students to relate the concepts taught in class to an actual construction project, resulting in improved student understanding of the concepts taught. This study is significant in that similar social constructivist approaches can be used in other entry level CMGT courses to greatly improve the quality of student learning.