Thanks to a recent grant award of $139,365 from the National Science Foundation (NSF), students majoring in construction management and engineering will be using cyberlearning technology, or "mixed reality," to prepare for careers.

Dr. Wei Wu, assistant professor in the Department of Construction Management, says the Lyles College of Engineering is one of 12 recipients in the nation to receive the grant.

Wu believes that the presence of advanced information and visualization technology in the workplace has exponentially grown and the need to introduce more technology in the learning processes is vital.

“It will be an exceptional opportunity for our students and their success, which is at the heart of what we do here,” he said.

The NSF grant proposal explains how research aims to explore the use of mixed reality as a cyberlearning technology; the goal is to assess how this type of increasingly affordable technology may be able to provide a similar type of learning experience for physical construction activities.

The grant —“Collaborative Research: Cultivating Apprenticeship Learning for Architecture, Engineering, and Construction Using Mixed Reality” — is a joint effort with Arizona State University (ASU).

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Augmented reality headset