Trends and Research Issues of Augmented Reality Studies in Architectural and Civil Engineering Education—A Review of Academic Journal Publications
Kenneth R. Moser
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript is fine, it's just the subject which is not very clear, and hence the results of research. Please do not use abbreviations in the title.
Author Response
On behalf of my co-author, your comments are highly appreciated. Corrections and explanations have been made accordingly with line numbers indicated as follows.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper provides a literature review across the BIM and ACE domains with respect to the usage and application of AR systems, devices, and applications to facilitate educational pedagogies for BIM and ACE topics. The authors categorized reviewed works using 10 coding schemes: Basic Information (nationality presence and number of works over time), Application Domains, Development Tools, System Types, Teaching Devices, Teaching Methods, Learning Strategies, Research Models, Advantages, and Challenges. They further regarded the works in terms of providing information to 4 questions concerning the trend and courses in which AR is used for ACE, the identification of AR system development programs, common modalities for AR pedagogies in ACE education, and the advantages and challenges of applying AR within the ACE education domain.
The authors have done a good job compiling the resources and works regarding the use of AR within the BIM and ACE education domain. I think it is very interesting, and would be of interest to some readers, to see the pedagogies that have arisen applying AR technologies as teaching / learning resources. Unfortunately, the language and flow of the work needs significant improvement before it should be considered for formal publication. The language of the work is very repetitive, causing the length to be overly bloated with respect to the actual contribution. The language is also fairly unclear and confusion with respect to the points the authors are actually trying to make, particularly in the Results/Discussion, and Conclusion sections. I found it quite hard to extract any meaningful conclusions drawn from the work. I would recommend the authors review the current draft and work to identify the unique points they wish to emphasize, and work to decrease the repetition, and keep the language of the work focused as keenly as possible on the essential points.
I believe the subject of the work is worthy of publication, and would be of interest, the current paper itself just needs some substantial improvement to greatly increase the contribution and decrease the length.
Author Response
On behalf of my co-author, your comments are highly appreciated. Corrections and explanations have been made accordingly with line numbers indicated as follows.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper surveys the application of AR in Architectural and civil engineering (ACE) education. After reading the paper different times I found merits in the research and I suggest a strong major revision of the paper because of different elements need to be discussed and improved.
- Research questions are stated and discussed. However, as a reader I failed to understand what is problem these research questions attempt to solve. At some stage I got the idea the authors where just summarising AR works in ACE education. I believe this is because the authors failed to explain why in ACE education. AR is applied to a vast range of application domains with some predominance in manufacturing and medical field (often due to more investment). Many of these applications have been designed to teach workers and students new tasks. Hence, it is unclear why the authors decided just to analyse a small part of AR in education. I think authors should state the challenges in ACE education that break it apart from other education domains because other domain have also deep connections to the physical world and perhaps the same challenges.
- Authors should define more clearly what is covered by Architectural and civil engineering (ACE) education. They give emphasis to BIM but other areas covered by architects (e.g. urban planning) are not considered. Data models like CityGML (city level) have been successfully applied in the field, as well as AR. Hence, it generates some confusion.
- Spatial Augmented Reality systems (e.g. based on projection) are another form of AR - and does not require holding devices to interact. These systems are well-suited for group learning experiences and have also been discussed in literature. As a matter of fact, many of the applications are in the field of architecture.
- The authors do not explain what LOD 100 and 500 is.
Author Response
On behalf of my co-author, your comments are highly appreciated. Corrections and explanations have been made accordingly with line numbers indicated as follows.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
this revision is fine
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors' notes and revisions are appreciated and I feel the modifications made improve the clarity of the discussion and make it easier to identify what exactly the results of the literature review aim to show.
Author Response
Would you please see the file attached.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The research work describes trends and research issues concerning AR and ACE. The article is well written and uses a suitable methodology. However, the research has a flaw in its first step: searching. It narrows the research to domain-driven papers which exclude relevant cross-domain contributions to the topic (e.g. tracking advances that benefit mechanical and architectural features). Hence, it is unclear to which extent this work is a survey of current trends and works. I would suggest the workers to put more effort and to demonstrate in the paper how such keywords are representative of the topic being analysed.
Author Response
Would you please see the file attached.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 3
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors have improved the manuscript and it is scientifically sound
