Potentials of Virtual Social Spaces for Construction Education

The reality of COVID-19 public health concerns and increasing demand for distance education have forced educators to move online delivery their courses. Particularly in construction education, the majority physical location-based educational activities (e.g., labs, site visits, or field trips) been canceled during pandemic that results reducing students’ engagement, learning motivation, cognitive achievement. Virtual Social Spaces (VSS) with innovative interaction affordances immersive experience are well poised supplement current education. This paper discusses potentials VSS while focusing on common applications VSS, communication collaboration design principles this technology based 15 popular platforms. Overall, mainly found entertainment, socializing. main include avatars, multi-user support, asynchronous commenting, synchronous chat, visual-sharing affordances. These technical features illustrate improving quality, eliminating challenges associated geographical dispersion students, decreasing lack engagement.