Development and Implementation of a Digital Twin-Enabled Teaching Model for Introductory Spatial Cognition Education in Urban and Rural Planning

Abstract

Spatial cognition is fundamental to site analysis and design practice in urban and rural planning education. To address challenges commonly encountered in first-year education—including fragmented on-site observation, difficulties in translating between two-dimensional drawings and three-dimensional space, a disconnect between site analysis and design development, and insufficient process-oriented assessment—this study uses a comprehensive campus teahouse design project completed by first-year urban and rural planning students as an exploratory teaching case. It introduces a lightweight, teaching-oriented digital twin to develop a virtual–physical integrated teaching model comprising six stages: on-site perception, digital mapping, virtual–physical comparison, spatial analysis, design exploration, and integrated representation. Developed in Unity, the environment supports site mapping, viewpoint switching, measurement, object visibility control, annotation, and the import and comparison of design schemes. The study further proposes a teaching assessment framework covering six dimensions: identification of environmental elements, judgment of spatial scale, understanding of spatial relationships, analysis of behavior and function, decision-making in design exploration, and integrated spatial representation. The study aims to explore how digital twins can connect on-site experience, design drawings, digital environments, and physical models, thereby providing a reference for introductory spatial cognition education in the first-year curriculum of urban and rural planning programs.