Farrow, C B and Burt, R (2018) High impact educational practices in construction education: An evaluation of student involvement and perceived value. In: Gorse, C and Neilson, C J (eds.) Proceedings of 34th Annual ARCOM Conference, 3-5 September 2018, Queen’s University, Belfast, UK.
Abstract
Recent focus on high impact practices within the collegiate experience has been intensified. The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) defines high impact educational practices (HIEP) as those activities that have the following traits: demand considerable time and effort; facilitate learning outside the classroom; require meaningful interactions with others; encourage diverse collaboration; and provide frequent and substantial feedback to the student. The field of construction management provides unique opportunities to connect education with professional practice and include all of the high impact traits above. One U.S. University has made an intensified effort over the past five years to ensure construction management students are meaningfully engaged in multiple high impact activities. These activities have been tracked as part of an assessment protocol since 2014, and a survey to assess the perceived value of HIEP was administered to graduating students in the Fall of 2017 to further gage student response. This survey includes feedback from sixty graduating seniors in a U.S. construction management undergraduate program. The results show that over 80% participated in at least two high impact experiences with “service learning” and “industry internship” being the most popular. Of the other HIEP, 33% participated in competition teams. These results are consistent with the assessment protocol data collected since 2014. From the student’s perspective, the industry internship was perceived as the most valuable experience. A quantitative analysis was used to confirm the results were statistically significant. Students self-reported additional benefits of the experiences including improved communication skills, enhanced ability to work with groups of people, and the ability to relate with industry or clients. Suggestions for improvement include expanded competition team opportunities and offering class credit for internships. Future research will include measurement of perceived changes in key knowledge, skills, and abilities before and after students engage in HIEP.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | construction education; educational strategies; experiential; high impact |
| Index terms: | competition, undergraduate, construction education, classroom, collaboration, graduating student, program, internship, service learning, professional practice, interaction, communication skill, quantitative analysis, national survey, student engagement, survey, strategy |
| Subjects: | learning methods, construction type, data collection methods, data analysis and analytics, curriculum development, research products and data, professional development, software systems, management, student development, behavioral psychology, professional education, market analysis |
| Topics: | Construction Technology, Research Practice, Information Management, Business Strategy, Education, Organizational Design, Digital Applications |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTE |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here