Framework for Interactive, Individualized Feedback Design to Improve Thinking Skills in Construction Education

Organizational improvement relies heavily on having a competent workforce. To facilitate continuous improvement in the construction industry, this study examined the weaknesses in problem-solving skills among today's students (the future workforce). Based on these findings, a new educational approach was proposed, taking today’s student characteristics such as Acquired Attention Deficit Disorder (AADD) into consideration. This proposed educational approach was proved to have immediate and lasting effects beyond class periods on students’ learning through improved thinking skill exercises.

Initial investigations focused on identifying weaknesses in exercising adequate thinking skills in problem-solving and determining the cause beyond the weaknesses. Weaknesses were identified when faced with information processing, locating inputs from multiple sources, repeating the same cognitive processes over extended periods, unfamiliar calculation direction, and ignoring industry common sense due to a calculation-oriented mindset. The lack of fundamentals was identified as the primary cause of the weakness.

To resolve the weaknesses by addressing the cause behind the weaknesses, a new educational approach was proposed and validated through a mixed method. First, a feedback framework was designed which functions for knowledge delivery. Feedback was designed to deliver highly relevant knowledge to the problem at hand and to be presented in a size to allow easy information consumption in real-time considering the target students’ characteristics and learning preferences, Generation Z.

Feedback, a knowledge delivery tool, had immediate effects on exercising thinking skills in problem-solving on a sample of 13 graduate-level students in the Department of Construction Science at Texas A&M University who volunteered for the experiment and the following interview. Especially, two factors of feedback were counted as the key to improving thinking skills, and they are the feedback that was given immediately in real-time when it was in need (when in need) and the feedback that matched the target knowledge in question (what is needed).

The design feedback also had a lasting impact on exercising adequate thinking skills, by which improved academic achievement was demonstrated in a sample of 24 students enrolled in a construction estimating course for undergraduate students at Western Kentucky University. The result of the paired t-test evidenced the effectiveness of feedback on knowledge retention and academic achievement. Additionally, 71% of 24 study participants responded to the self-confidence survey, and the positive self-confidence in exercising thinking skills in each category in Bloom’s Taxonomy also denoted the efficacy of knowledge feeding in feedback.

This study theoretically expanded types of feedback by adding knowledge delivery to the existing feedback types. With this addition, feedback now functions not only giving confirmation or correction for the performance, but it also functions as a vehicle for knowledge delivery. Pragmatically, this study proposed a novel educational approach which aligns with today’s students’ learning preferences and weaknesses.