This article reports on student perceptions of an innovative graduate construction engineering course using BIM and industry-academic collaboration with extensive construction site internships. The course, Building Information Modeling (BIM) in Construction, was designed and implemented to help students develop deep BIM learning and allow them to apply this software in real engineering companies. The students were immersed in construction companies, as interns on construction sites. Our research goals were to study the students' learning and any impacts on the companies' practices; in particular, how new communication skills, tools, symbols, concepts, and procedures disseminated in both directions. Open-ended survey responses from the years 2017, 2018, and 2019 were analyzed using the constant comparison method to allow themes to emerge from the data. The analysis of these data shows 1) Through the design and prior training of workers, it generated a psychologically safe learning environment for students in companies. 2) students recognize they establish a clear connection between the objectives of the course and the work within the companies, 3) The bridge built through a WIL experience between the companies and the course, allowed the students to impact the work of the companies becoming a win-win experience and 4) understanding the main student's barriers that must be minimized for a became full-participants and recommendations for the design and implementation of WIL experiences. The curricular integration of work experiences appears to effectively support the development of students into highly skilled construction engineers. This paper extends the knowledge base on WIL by identifying how students develop as brokers mediating the academic and professional communities, and tracing the bidirectional flow of information, concepts, procedures, and materials between the academic and professional communities. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.
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