Transformation of a Collaborative Virtual Reality Environment for construction scheduling to help individual with mental health issues

The development of educational materials tends to be costly and time consuming, especially when using innovative technology such as collaborative virtual reality environments. The overall goal of this project was to develop a collaborative virtual reality environment for construction scheduling that could be transformed with minor modifications to be used in other areas such as to help individuals with mental health issues. The technology used to develop the environment was second life. Second life is an Internet-based virtual world. A downloadable client program enables its users, to interact with each other. In the case of this project, a group of students were asked to schedule a construction project and a group of volunteers were ask to play simple games that are expected to help individuals with mental health issues. While the two areas are not directly related, it is worth noting that the main modifications necessary to migrate from one area to the other were: (1) to establish the sequencing of the new process, and (2) to create new 3D models for the process. The results from the implementation of this project could serve as a steppingstone in the race towards innovation in engineering education.