2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

All class participants, including instructors and students, contribute to creating a unique culture or classroom environment. This environment heavily depends on interactions among participants through various class activities. The classroom environment reflects the characteristics of its participants and significantly impacts students’ learning as they engage with one another. This paper presents a quantitative analysis of the classroom environment, focusing on social relationship development activities and their effects on student performance in a construction management course. In this case study, social relationship development activities are defined as pedagogical methods aimed at increasing student engagement, serving as an alternative to the traditional lecture format. A total of six social relationship development activities were evaluated by students in terms of their impact on the classroom environment. These activities included an icebreaker game, individual meetings with the instructor, a boot camp, an in-class term project, classmate tutor, and team quiz. Using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), the six activities were grouped into two latent factors. The first latent factor included four activities: the icebreaker game, boot camp, team quiz, and in-class term project. The second latent factor consists of the individual meetings with the instructor and classmate tutor. Based on the characteristics of these activities, the first latent factor was categorized as “Team,” while the second latent factor was categorized as “Individual.” Using structural equation modeling (SEM), the influence of these two latent factors on students’ grades was analyzed. Both latent factors positively impacted students’ grades, with the individual factor having a stronger effect than the team factor. This study highlights the importance of a classroom environment built on social relationship development activities for enhancing students’ learning. These findings can guide educators in designing activities that improve students’ academic performance and foster stronger relationships with their peers.