The Effect of Real and Virtual Construction Field Trips on Students’ Perception and Career Aspiration

Abstract

To adequately prepare students for engineering practices, it is imperative that institutions adopt innovative methods of teaching, learning, and assessment. One such approach is the use of real field trips (RFT) to construction sites, which can enhance students’ perceptions of related careers. Although virtual field trips (VFTs) have emerged as a viable alternative—or supplement—to traditional field trips, little is known about their potential to provide the same or similar career exploration advantages. Using responses from a self-reported questionnaire administered to university students who participated in an RFT, this study sought to examine the usefulness of site visits in developing essential skills required for civil engineers. It also examines student perceptions on the use of VFTs as part of their university experience and the extent to which it could replace RFTs. The results indicate that students consider VFT as an enjoyable way to learn, given the possibilities facilitated by the new technology. However, notwithstanding its success, the students commonly opined that VFT was not a substitute for a RFT. From a holistic perspective, the issue is not whether VFTs can replace traditional field trips or not; it is rather the focus on identifying an integrated approach that combines lectures, and virtual and real field trips in a manner that supports a social constructivism mode of learning. Ultimately, this combination will enable students to effectively construct multiple links between lectures given in a hall and the real world outside.

The Outbreak of the COVID-19 Pandemic and its Social Impact on Education: Were Engineering Teachers Ready to Teach Online?

“…It can be seen that the students repeated the words “course”, “teaching”, “online”, “F2F” and “teacher” more than any others. The first four words are closely related to the subject matter addressed in the survey, the analysis of which is irrelevant, as indicated in other similar studies [ 55 ]. However, the word “teacher” is not directly related to the situation under study and reinforces the abovementioned aspect: the great importance that students attributed to the teacher in both types of teaching, but with special emphasis on online teaching.…”

“…The purpose of the last questions of the survey was to establish whether the students considered that the course had been difficult to understand (statement 17) or to pass (statement 18), whether they thought they had learned (statement 19), and whether they had a high workload (statement 20). These direct questions (see Section 2.5 ) were asked to elicit replies from the students that were focused on the specific aspects that the authors of this research work wished to analyze [ 55 ].…”

“…The last step was to design the survey to be administered to the students. The survey had to elicit student perceptions [ 47 ], while collecting clear information for analysis to facilitate the interpretation of the results [ 55 ]. Therefore, a numerical valuation survey was considered the best option.…”

“…In this survey, the students were asked to express their agreement or otherwise with a series of statements on a 5-point Likert-type scale (1, strongly disagree; 2, disagree; 3, unsure; 4, agree; 5, strongly agree). However, the general viewpoints behind their perceptions were also considered of interest, as aspects that were not addressed in the numerical-answer questions of the survey could be detected [ 55 ]. An open question was therefore also included.…”

Experiential Learning through Field Trips: Effects on Educational, Social and Personal Development among Linguistics Majors

“…Numerous studies conducted on the effectiveness of field trips in enhancing the learning experience and development showed that students remember more what they had learned in the classroom when they participated in field trips (Behrendt & Franklin, 2014;Bowen, 2014;Kennedy, 2014;Krakowka, 2012;Mahgoub & Alawad, 2014;Manner, 2018;Myers & Jones, 2004). Field trips have been used as part of the teaching and learning process in many fields, including arts (Mahgoub & Alawad, 2014), geography (Ilovan, Dulama, Nagy & Adorean, 2019;Krakowka, 2012;Latipah, Ruhimat & Somantri, 2019;Preston, 2016), science (Behrendt & Franklin, 2014), engineering (Hanh & Hop, 2018;Seifan, Dada & Berenjian, 2020) and even law (Higgins, Dewhurst & Watkins, 2012;Nawi & Fuziana, 2016).…”