Project management education research excellence within cyber-infrastructure environment

New educational tools and methods have evolved during recent decades as a direct consequence of technology advance. One of these effective pedagogical tools is simulation. The novel features and capabilities (added to simulation applications due to technological advances) have accelerated the pace of growth so that many majors, such as aviation and medical science, have been utilizing simulation as a rich supplementary tool in their curricula. In spite of a strong potential context that exists in construction project management for employing simulation, there are only a limited number of applications developed for educational purposes in the project management area. This research project explores the effectiveness of using simulation for education of construction project management. To answer the research questions and examine the hypotheses, this study explicates the bases of developing simulation and measuring its effectiveness, and illustrates the design, development, and implementation of two simulation applications: Virtual Interactive Construction Education (VICE) and Project-oriented Educational Research Fostering Excellence in Cyber-infrastructure Teaching (PERFECT). VICE concentrates on the management of a single span bridge project, incorporates project resource constraints, and navigates students through main activities by showing the consequences of each decision they make to achieve the project’s goals. Based on the results and feedback from VICE, PERFECT was developed to provide the contents in the project time management area according to the PMBOK standard. The pedagogical value of both applications is determined in two ways: a retrospective self-evaluation of pre and post simulation, and comparison of actual performance of participants before and during simulation. The project’s findings affirm the effectiveness of using simulation for project management education and indicate simulation’s role in the increase of students’ interest in related subjects. Implementation of VICE and PERFECT, along with their results, promotes the pedagogical perspective toward using simulation and provides a learning basis for future simulation applications in the project management area