2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Over the past several decades, the construction industry has experienced significant growth. Consequently, the needs and opportunities to adapt to this growth in construction education are clear to academics. Learning and developing concepts like teamwork, effective communication, and interpersonal skills are equally important to construction technical concepts like estimating, scheduling, and project control since in the absence of interpersonal skills and relationships, it would be difficult to work and collaborate effectively in the construction industry. At Mississippi State University (MSU) Department of Building Construction Science (BCS), the first-year curriculum employs a design-build instructional delivery method to integrate fundamental knowledge in construction management. The BCS curriculum utilizes “studio” as the standard layout elicited from project-based learning (PjBL) for the core construction management content. Studios are typically longer than regular lab or lecture courses as they provide the opportunity to work on projects during the studio time.
In this study, we investigated the students’ perception about this process as a model of learning and explored their experiences in the studio. We asked students about their perceptions of efficiency, productivity, their learning outcome, expectations of the construction industry, challenges they faced and opportunities they discovered. The study employs a quantitative approach via a survey instrument to collect data (n:58). The preliminary results indicated an overall positive trend in productivity and efficiency of learning using design-build. Students indicated various challenges namely, time management, conflicts between members of a team and intensity of building tasks and fabrication. Overall, design-build as an instructional delivery mode has shown to present merit in conveying construction fundamental knowledge, however, challenges with time and group size seem to impact the overall efficiency of the model.