Implementing work-integrated learning in online construction management courses

Implementing online learning can pose serious pedagogical challenges particularly when programs contain work-integrated learning (WIL) components. One such component is the site visit, where student groups are led by subject matter experts through an authentic environment. These WIL experiences help students relate the theory learnt in classrooms to practice. Construction management students particularly benefit from repeated visits to the same building site to appreciate the spatial and temporal constraints and how they change over the life of the building project. Unfortunately, logistics and occupational health and safety concerns have increasingly limited the inclusion of site visits in school and university curricula. Online construction management students are widely dispersed and therefore it is impractical to include shared physical site visits in the curriculum, although students are able to observe locally-based construction sites and report back their findings. In response, universities have collaborated with construction companies and, using significant federal funding, created an interactive learning environment that follows the construction of an eight-storey building over time. This high quality resource is a type of virtual WIL that has been primarily used in face-to-face teaching. In this case study we implement this resource in a fully online construction management course and create three comparatively low-cost environments that demonstrate the construction of residential, industrial, and multi-storey building construction sites, for implementation in another two online construction courses. As an enhancement, within these new environments are embedded images, explanatory videos and documents which students can interact with to create a virtual tour that can be embedded directly alongside the concepts being studied in their weekly learning materials. In addition, these tours are linked to specific online learning activities designed to motivate students to reflect on and refine their understandings based on the authentic context they are experiencing. To better understand the processes involved in this collaboration between school academics, staff from a central teaching innovation unit, and two construction companies, the business processes employed were modelled using a swimlane diagram. Insights into the practicalities of implementing these virtual tours are shared. The experiential learning outcomes of students using virtual WIL are comparable to traditional site visits. Initial online student feedback of small cohorts of online students has been overwhelmingly positive and encouraging for the development of more interactive virtual tours. The implementation of virtual tours and activities, blended with independent face-to-face site visits and assessment, forms an authentic, supported and constructively-aligned WIL experience for students undertaking fully online courses

Coping and managing under uncertainty

Uncertainty is an inescapable ingredient of life. Even in familiar situations – such as crossing a street – some level of uncertainty inevitably exists. Past experience is relevant for all decisions involving the future, but contexts change and new elements affecting risk may unexpectedly appear. Usually, this residual uncertainty remains within reasonable bounds and human beings make their way in an uncertain and changing world where existing knowledge and experience suffice as guides to future expectations (Pollack, 2003). But where highly complex systems with extensive connectivity and interaction exist, or where novel problems or technology limit experience as a resource, decisions often must be made under conditions of high uncertainty. It is not surprising, as the various chapters in the volume make clear, that in a world of complex systems involving rapid technological change, highly coupled human and natural systems, and a kaleidoscope of social, economic and political institutions, high levels of uncertainty challenge existing assessment methods and established decision and management procedures

Uncertainty metaphors, motives and morals

If we are to understand how and why people construct and respond to uncertainty as they do, then we need accounts of underpinning motivations and moral orientations. As presented in Chapter 2, metaphors provide insights into these, so we begin by briefly revisiting metaphors about uncertainty, examining those used in the chapters in this volume. We then explore motivational aspects, before moving on to the relatively uncharted territory of morals. While it may seem odd initially to consider the notion of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ uncertainty, it turns out that many disciplines and, especially professions, harbour views of exactly this kind.As Smithson highlighted in Chapter 2, most of the metaphors that are used to describe uncertainty are negative. While a number of these metaphors appear in the chapters of this book, it is interesting that there also appear a number of new and mainly positive ones

The nature of uncertainty

As far as we are aware, this book is unique in bringing together such a number of diverse perspectives on uncertainty. The collection of essays broadens our understanding of where uncertainty comes from, how we perceive it and how we deal with it. In the next three chapters we weave those insights together, supplementing them with learning from the discussion at the symposium. We use the framework Smithson laid out in Chapter 2 to structure our synthesis, focusing particularly on enriching that framework with new examples and insights