Collaborative Learning Experience in a Construction Project Site Trip

Abstract

Even though construction management is a practice-oriented profession, it is not always easy to cover practical aspects of the content. Construction Management I at the University of Texas at San Antonio is a lecture-based course and includes many project-related administrative topics. Most students who take this course have no previous construction project experience. This type of course is typically instructor-centered, i.e., it is taught with passive learning methods. Recognizing this fact, different strategies were developed every semester to make the lecture more interactive and learner-centered. This study is about a construction-site trip experience including an integrated, collaborative learning exercise covering the request for information (RFI) content of a construction-management course. This content is previously covered in class with a teamwork exercise and is also covered with a teamwork exercise during the construction-site trip with examples of technical problems encountered during the execution of the construction project. To measure the effectiveness of the site trip, a survey was conducted with participating students. The findings indicate that students favored the learning experience. In addition to class, this type of exercise is a good supplementary method for learning. The integration of a collaborative technical exercise during the site trip is the novel portion of this study.