Learning by playing – teaching energy simulation as a game

Abstract

Being able to read thermal simulation results and to adapt one's design accordingly has become an essential skill for graduating and practicing architects. This paper proposes and evaluates an innovative way of how this skill can be taught via a 90-minutes in-class exercise or 'game' based on DesignBuilder/EnergyPlus. The game was tested in a class of 47 architecture students who competed to generate the lowest Energy Use Intensity (EUI) for an office building in Boston. Design upgrades were associated with a cost premium and the overall upgrade budget was capped. The EUIs of the ten final submissions were 22 to 31% below the base variant. While student essays revealed a clear preference for game-based learning vis-a-vis conventional teaching methods, the authors further propose that the game nourishes the emergence of an energy modeling 'culture' within schools of architecture that may lead to enhanced communication between architects and energy modelers.

Game-Based Learning for Green Building Education

“…Therefore, there is a significant relationship between learning effectiveness and motivation, broken down into attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction. This positive correlation is aligned with findings by Keller and implies that if instructional materials and teaching models are attractive and meet the needs and desires of learners, and if appropriate content planning and guidance allow learners to gain a sense of achievement and satisfaction with the learning process, the learning effect will be significantly improved [16]. …”

“…Tabletop games are easy to transport, easy to learn, environmentally friendly, and cheap to produce; further, they foster easy communication and transmission of knowledge or skills [30]. Tabletop games have been used on many topics in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry, including simulation of the building tender process [25], urban sustainable development learning [27], energy simulation [16], interdisciplinary communication and education for climate change [31], and construction resource allocation practices [32]. These examples show that tabletop games can be applied widely to education and can simulate various scenarios.…”

“…In addition, in many customer-oriented property markets such as East Asian countries, the willingness of construction companies to invest in green buildings has often been low because customers are not inclined to purchase a built product with high initial costs [9]. Therefore, there is still considerable room for improvement in the promotion of green building concepts and the public's awareness of environmental conservation [16].…”

A Method to Introduce Building Performance Simulation to Beginners

“…Reinhart et al (2012) introduced a game-based method to improve students' understanding of different design solutions [12]. The game proposes a range of design choices that, combined, offers about 400 000 solutions with different energy use intensity (EUI) and costs; student groups achieving the lowest EUI and acceptable costs were awarded with extra credits in their examination [12]. The method focuses on how to inform design, while, in our course, there was a need to develop basic BPS skills.…”

Tools for low-energy building design: an exploratory study of the design process in action

“…Such understanding is likely to inform the development of tools (De Wilde & Van Der Voorden, 2004;Mahdavi, 2011); to identify how tools fit in the process and its data flows (Augenbroe & Winkelmann, 1991); and to identify the relationship between the characteristics of the design tools and the nature of the design process (Mahdavi & Suter, 1998). There is a growing interest in considering the practical use of simulation by the building industry, for example, in terms of: communication and visualisation of results (Bleil de Souza & Tucker, 2015;Hamza & DeWilde, 2014); architects' perspectives as potential users of building performance simulation (Alsaadani & Bleil de Souza, 2012); the role of simulation in the communication between architects and simulationists (Reinhart, Dogan, Ibarra, & Samuelson, 2012), to cite few. However, the use of building performance simulation by designers during realtime design remains underexplored.…”