2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) sector expects a digital transformation with Building Information Modeling (BIM), which can save 10~25% for office buildings and 15~25% for highway construction projects. However, the lack of skilled BIM workforces is a major challenge for the growing infrastructure investment demands.

Authors are experienced BIM researchers and instructors, their observations found that cognitive overload easily occurs in BIM software learners as learning complicated application software. Currently, teaching and learning are both hard and time-consuming. Learner’s attentions frequently swing between software screens and the (a) step-by-step manual with text and annotations, or (2) instructor’s demonstrations. Digital transformations and adoptions in business operations are becoming much more successful by using On-Screen Interactive Guide (OSIG) at onboard training. However, BIM software is more complex than those business web applications. Still, there is no existing OSIG for any specific BIM software or universal OSIG software for training available.

Hence, this Work-in-Progress (WIP) paper presents a research project that aims to develop an OSIG tool to employ “Learning by Doing” to promote practical hands-on learning experiences on BIM software, as a pathway towards successfully educating and producing more skilled BIM workforces. First, an OSIG prototype for teaching and learning BIM software, i.e., Autodesk Revit, will be developed, in which an OSIG editor creates software laboratory manuals and saves them as English-like scripts for the OSIG player to “play.” Then, an AI-powered OSIGAI version with adaptive instructions will be proposed with an emphasis on Design Thinking and optimized Cognitive Load.

Present this WIP paper at ASEE annual conference will help the authors to gain the feedback and inputs from the engineering design software education community, as well as establish patronships with more institutions for the nationwide implementation of the OSIG. Then, comparative experiments will be used to understand the effects of the on-screen instructions on students at the participating programs in learning BIM software skills.

This project is transformative in the following aspects. First, how BIM Revit functions and skills are lectured and learned is novel and transformative by using the OSIG to reduce instructors’ stress in teaching and students’ cognitive overload in learning. Second, with a good understanding of the learning characteristics of each learner, the OSIGAI can generate the best and most personalized scripts for any individual learner.