Bulding Information Modeling-oriented Educational Courses for a Heterogeneous Audience

How to convey a complex message in terms readily understandable by people with different backgrounds? An experienced trainer should understand the type of audience in front of her; in class, students are usually the same age, but in cases of courses dedicated to acquiring specific knowledge, the chance is to face people of different ages, different ambitions, passionate or not and with different skills. How to better manage and enhance their differences? Thinking that they can all learn from each other, the best option is to open discussion with them in order to stimulate their curiosity. Within the present article, a feedback on an educational course related to Building Information Modeling (BIM) methodology is given. In that case the audience included a mixed bunch of young students having several backgrounds, some of them were University students, some others just finished the surveyor school. The challenge here was finding a good mean of communication to meet the needs of both kind of audience. First of all, when approaching lessons, a clear statement of who and what is going to be presented is paramount; in order to be listened when explaining something, it is important to establish a connection, a relationship with the audience to reach the point they trust you and are willing to believe in what you are saying. For this reason, the first part of the course consisted of a presentation of the team staff working at the University laboratory with the speakers. The aim was to highlight the organization of research projects, the relationship with students, the innovative technologies for Virtual and Augmented Reality (VAR) purchased and currently available at the lab. This communication used several forms of support, mainly multimedia, in order to be more effective in conveying the message. The learning assessment included two different tools. In the first exercise students were asked to provide a slide individually, deepening a preferred topic; in the second exercise students were asked to work in group and produce specific documents by a specific amount of time. The whole experience showed how much important is including BIM-oriented educational audience in order to educate the new generation of professionals.