Teaching collaboration in tertiary BIM education: a review and analysis

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is inherently a team-based activity and possessing the Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSAs) to collaborate across various disciplines and organisations are central for BIM-ready graduates. There is, nevertheless, no systematic attempt to analyse the current approaches to teaching collaboration KSAs across tertiary education institutions. This study is an attempt to provide an account of the current approaches taken by leading universities for training and educating collaboration, as a part of their BIM education programs. To this end, 63 articles on BIM education were identified, of which 18 were used to extract their practices to teaching collaboration. The content analysis of these studies revealed that the practices identified can be presented under 4 broad categories including Instructional approach, Prerequisites, Marking and evaluation, and Feedback, in which each category has various sub-categories. As the first in its kind, the present study provides an analysis and synthesis of the best practices for teaching educating collaboration, and therefore, assists educators and curriculum builders in integrating collaboration KSAs into BIM education in construction related curricula.