Minimising content stagnation in construction education: Automating the content update through a shared web repository for distance construction education

Abstract

With the use of modern information and communication technologies the distance education in construction has become easier and effective than ever before. However, the focus of the most of the construction distance education systems in place today is the need of students who are geographically prevented from attending the programmes hosted by an educational institution established physically or virtually. Generally, this arrangement is based on a model, where the information is hosted centrally by a single organisation while the geographically apart students access information asynchronously. One of the shortcomings of this model is the possibility of content stagnation due to the inflexibility in updating the content. Addressing this issue, as a part of an international collaborative research project, namely European and Asian Infrastructure Advantage (EURASIA), a virtual environment has been created where the partners (five higher education institutions from Europe and Asia) are contributing to a central content repository. Accordingly, this paper discusses the rationale and the technology used for this virtual environment and its development process. Further it discusses its progress to date and the benefits envisaged by the users to date