Construction education in an architecture school in China based on real-life project: from virtuality to reality

The skills shortage in the construction industry in China is exacerbated by a very high demand for students in architecture schools, for construction tradespeople and for architects with a working understanding of how buildings are constructed. This has become a growing problem and an invisible barrier among practitioners, universities and the construction industry in recent years. Students majoring in architecture are familiar with construction drawings, but lack construction-related knowledge to translate these drawings into buildings. In contrast, some construction practitioners are not familiar with the factors that influence design and design processes. This highlights the need for practical construction education in architecture schools. This paper explores the construction teaching practices in an architecture school in China. The Industry-Education-Research Cooperation (IERC) approach involves the construction of buildings rather their representation as drawings. This paper analyses and compares students' efforts in five-year graduate design degrees. It then analyses the benefits of IERC and the differences between it and traditional construction education. This is followed by a discussion of the significance and implications of these approaches to training, teaching and learning about construction. The findings reveal that traditional construction courses have drawbacks including not only formalism, low uptake of knowledge, but also disconnection and gaps between theory and practice, virtuality and reality, drawings and buildings, as well as universities and construction enterprises. The IERC construction education mode is based on real-life projects and is recommended as an approach that benefits universities and the construction industry as a whole.