Asee peer logo

Modifying the Syllabus on Construction Materials and Methods to Better Prepare Construction Students for Upper-level Courses, Co-ops, or Internships

Download Paper |

Conference

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Location

Virtual Conference

Publication Date

July 26, 2021

Start Date

July 26, 2021

End Date

July 19, 2022

Conference Session

Construction Engineering Division Technical Session 2

Tagged Division

Construction Engineering

Page Count

15

DOI

10.18260/1-2--37515

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/37515

Download Count

335

Paper Authors

biography

George Okere University of Cincinnati Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-0727-9038

visit author page

George is currently an associate professor educator, and heavy highway chair (endowed position) in the Civil and Architectural Engineering and Construction Management Department in the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Cincinnati (UC). George has over 23 years of construction industry work experience, and 11.5 years of which was with Kiewit, where he worked on various heavy civil projects. He received his PhD in Technology Management from Indiana State University with a specialization in Construction Management. He joined academia in 2014. His research focus is on contract administration on heavy civil projects, as well as on construction education. His teaching areas include 1. introduction to the built environment and construction management, 2. construction materials and methods, 3. construction equipment, 4. building construction cost estimating, 5. heavy civil construction cost estimating, 6. project planning, scheduling, and control, 7. temporary structures, and 8. contract changes and claims.

visit author page

Download Paper |

Abstract

Educators often find out that students in upper-level courses are not prepared as they should be to tackle upper-level courses. The two possible reasons could be that the foundational prerequisite courses completed by the students may have gaps in them, or that the students were not required to complete the foundational prerequisites. The lack of properly grounded foundational prerequisite courses also has a profound impact on field readiness and student ability to confidently tackle duties assigned to them while on co-ops or internships. As such, some of the students may predominantly learn from on-the-job experience, as different from a combination of on-the-job experience and in-classroom experience. The necessary prerequisites should be made available to students to fill the learning gaps, and the coverage of the prerequisites should go far enough. The objective of this paper is to evaluate current practice and make necessary modifications to the construction materials and methods course (a lower-level course) to better prepare students in the construction related programs. The research follows a qualitative research method. The research evaluated the need for prerequisites, as well as the need to design prerequisite courses with relevant course content. A synthesis of current materials covered in the construction materials and methods course was then conducted. In addition, the research analyzed job advertisement data on construction field duties sought by construction companies seeking students for co-op, as well as data on what the students recorded as construction field duties completed while on co-op. Finally, the research presents the proposed improvement and recommendations for modifying current construction materials and methods course content. The significance of this research is that the improved version of the construction materials and methods course could be used to better prepare students in construction related programs.

Okere, G. (2021, July), Modifying the Syllabus on Construction Materials and Methods to Better Prepare Construction Students for Upper-level Courses, Co-ops, or Internships Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--37515

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2021 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015