An instructional design for building energy simulation e-learning: an interdisciplinary approach

Abstract

This article describes the development of a new instructional design (ISD) to promote building energy simulation (BES) education. The study is based upon education fundamentals combined with computer-based learning and hypermedia to enable the development of a BES-based distance learning system. Some cognitive tools are established such as: (i) an interdisciplinary knowledge tree of BES that can be used by professionals with different backgrounds; (ii) a hypermedia navigational aid to understand the simulation software, called the BES tool graphic organizer; (iii) a concept map with an overview of building energy performance and (iv) a cooperative problem-based learning (CPBL) environment. Furthermore, the paper also brings an analysis of the students’ comprehension – from a course applied across Brazil – by means of concept network graphs from text mining provided by the CPBL environment, showing a significant potential to develop interdisciplinary e-learning related to building energy efficiency.

Keywords:

• building performance simulation education
• BES e-learning
• interdisciplinary research
• building energy efficiency
• user interface

ORCID

Elise Mendes http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6041-6356

Notes

1. The Moodle could be adapted for the present ISD due to its structure and to the plug-in that can be used as part of the web-based platform. Only two plug-ins have been created: (1) Overview of learning topics presented in the curriculum tree since Moodle does not provide this function. (2) Cooperative problem-based learning environment (CPBL). Although Moodle presents a structure that can create concept bases and flaps, we had first to study the link between the CBPL concept bases and the concept maps.

2. Due to the difficulty of representing the whole of BES knowledge tree in a static image, the image was cut into 2a and 2b.

3. Semantic analysis is “the process of relating syntactic structures, from the levels of phrases, clauses, sentences and paragraphs to the level of the writing as a whole, to their language-independent meanings. It also involves removing features specific to particular linguistic and cultural contexts” (Goddard 2013, 7).

4. The student’s comments were edited to make them clear.

Additional information

Funding

The authors thank ELETROBRAS – Centrais Elétricas do Brasil [grant number ECV 283/08] – for the financial support to develop the RTQ-C Plug-in for Domus and to promote its dissemination across Brazil and CNPq – Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico of the Ministry for Science [grant number 480061/2008-4], Technology, Innovation and Communication of Brazil – for the continuous support to LST/PUCPR.