2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Improving Collaboration and Teamwork Skills in Construction Engineering Education: A Case Study from the Final Portfolio Course

The construction industry’s complexity demands strong collaboration skills, yet many engineering graduates are unprepared for this challenge. In Chile, only 49.5% of engineering students report developing practical teamwork skills, revealing a critical gap in their training. Addressing this requires fostering key competencies such as collaboration, leadership, communication, conflict resolution, and a strong sense of belonging and shared responsibility. This study aims to determine the impact of collaboration strategies on final-year students' perceptions of teamwork, sense of belonging, and self-efficacy through the analysis of real cases and group dynamics developed in the Final Construction Engineering Portfolio Course. This study adopts a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative and qualitative data within a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design. Surveys were applied to all 21 students enrolled in the Final Construction Engineering Portfolio Course during the second semester 2024. Two instruments were used: one focused on teamwork skills and another on sense of belonging and self-efficacy. The participants were organized into seven teams of three students, representing 100% of the course cohort. All activities and data collection were integrated into the regular course schedule. The intervention improved students’ perceptions of teamwork, particularly in areas such as responsibility, leadership, and collaboration. Reports of unequal workload distribution dropped significantly, suggesting better team coordination by the end of the course. Students also showed increased autonomy and a stronger sense of belonging, and they valued peer feedback and small-team work more. However, the rise in stress associated with teamwork highlights the importance of integrating collaborative skill development earlier in the curriculum.

Authors

Carmen Paz Munoz Universidad Andres Bello, Santiago, Chile [biography]

Carmen Paz has a degree in Civil Construction from the Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María and a master’s degree in Real Estate Development from the Universidad de Chile. She has over 22 years of experience in the areas of concrete construction, the cement industry, ready-mixed concrete, construction process consultancy, and concrete deterioration and durability. In addition, she has more than 16 years of experience in university and field-based teaching. She is the Director of quality assurance of School of Engineering at the Universidad Andrés Bello in Santiago, Chile, and a permanent contributing columnist for the Negocio & Construccion magazine. Her areas of interest include improving academic management in the Construction Engineering degree program and seeking new ways to enhance the experience of students and teaching professionals at the university. She also focuses her efforts on recruiting and retaining students to the program and ensuring they can learn key concepts in the most meaningful manner possible.
Dr. Monica Quezada-Espinoza http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0383-0179 Universidad Andres Bello, Santiago, Chile [biography]

Monica Quezada-Espinoza is a professor and researcher at the School of Engineering at Universidad Andrés Bello in Santiago, Chile, where she collaborates with the Educational and Academic Innovation Unit (UNIDA) as an instructor in active learning methodologies and mentors engineering faculty in educational research. She is the Secretary of the Women in Engineering Division (WIED) of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) and an associate researcher in the STEM Latin America Network, specifically in the STEM + Gender group. Her research interests are diverse and focus on university education in STEM fields, faculty and professional development, research-based methodologies, and the use of evaluation tools and technology for education. She is also passionate about investigating conceptual learning in abstract physics topics, developing strategies to improve the retention of first-year engineering students, and enhancing skills and competencies in higher education. Additionally, Monica is dedicated to exploring gender issues in STEM education, with a particular emphasis on studying and proposing improvements for the inclusion of women in highly male-dominated fields. For more information on her work, visit her ORCID profile.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025

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