Research Initiation: Explore student virtual collaborations to prepare for future digital education

Collaboration skills in the virtual environment are critical to the future workforce in the architecture, construction, and engineering industry since virtual design and construction is becoming a work style and culture for construction projects in the United States. In addition, the ongoing trend of digital education (e-learning) provides a great potential to foster engineering students' virtual collaboration skills.

A wide range of disciplines including civil engineering programs have started to offer students e-learning opportunities. Since 2010, more than 5,000 online courses have emerged and this number is growing. Many institutions have changed their instructional modality to include online or hybrid approaches and the trend of e-learning is expected to continue in the post-pandemic era.

Thus, there is a critical and urgent need to investigate the collaboration characteristics and processes of engineering students in the virtual environment. This project will prepare the engineering education community to better foster students’ professional skills in the future era of digital education. Specifically, this project will improve strategies for the design and execution of digital courses or modules that benefit engineering faculty, administrators, and practitioners who are involved in leading, developing, or managing e-learning programs.

E-learning refers to the use of digital technology for learning purposes such as online learning, virtual learning, distance education, and mobile learning. The goal of this initiation project is to explore student collaboration in the virtual environment. The specific objectives of this project include: to describe student collaboration characteristics; to identify student collaboration processes and influences on learning; and to improve the PI’s methodological skills and experiences in engineering education research.

The focus of this project will be on student collaboration with a scope of project-based learning. The project will apply a treatment and control research design which is built upon the theory of network for collaboration and the theory of the zone of proximal development for student learning and development. Both quantitative data and qualitative data will be collected, analyzed, and compared using network approaches to provide a holistic interpretation of students’ virtual collaboration.

The outcomes of this project will advance the understanding of how construction and civil engineering students collaborate in the virtual environment, and why. The findings will include empirical data and case studies that contribute to the e-learning literature, network theory, and the student learning literature. The findings will lay the groundwork for engineering educators and scholars to better foster engineering students' virtual collaboration skills that are underlined by both accreditation requirements and the AEC industry demands.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.