**3. BIM and global education in architectural academic programs**

BIM education and BIM awareness/uptake are still at different levels of implementation across the globe. Most countries are reporting BIM education being provided to architecture engineering and construction (AEC) students by their higher education and technical training institutions. The number of courses being offered is not significantly increasing year on year, with countries/regions such as Australia, Canada, Chile and Finland perhaps being the exception. This may indicate that the number of courses offering some form of BIM education may be reaching its saturation point in many countries/regions. However, many countries and regions are reporting that the content of such courses is now being expanded to include more sophisticated elements of BIM [7].

It was realized that BIM education in university curricula is an important demand for fulfilling educational adaptation in real work in the architecture industry. It is believed that BIM in academia is the fastest way to fill the gap between the education and real work and accelerates BIM knowledge and skills. It is a general believe that the fundamental education has to cover the lack of BIM-skilled professionals to fill the gap between BIM and the architecture industry.

Schools of architecture are adopting BIM in different courses in the curriculum: Digital graphic representation (DGR), workshop, design studio, BIM course,

construction technology, construction management, research project and training. The predominant approach of schools is to adopt BIM in Design Studio, however, there are cases where design studios are integrated with other courses. Another approach is to teach tools and BIM in a specific BIM course. There are also cases in which tools are taught on courses of short duration (one week) non as workshops, which are generally design studios. Similarly, the workshops can be isolated or integrated with some courses. A BIM course may be elective or integrate the curriculum, in isolation or integrated with another course [8].
