The Interaction of Civil Engineering Students in Group Work through the Social Network Analysis

Abstract

A sustainable approach in the construction industry requires civil engineering professionals with technical and soft skills. Those skills complement each other and facilitate the professional to work effectively in multidisciplinary groups during the development of construction projects. Universities apply collaborative learning methods such as group work (GW) in the classroom to achieve these skills. There is disagreement on the best way to select the members of the GW to achieve their best performance, but it is clear that it should favor the interaction of diverse actors to promote the development of soft skills. A random or criteria-based selection could bring groups of people very close together, leading to the academic homogeneity of GW members and impairing performance and learning. Even the most alert instructors lack information about the closeness of their students, so they rely on their intuition without having tools that allow them to confirm their assumptions or relate them to GW performance. The objective of this paper was to discover the social structures within the classrooms and to identify the groups of people close by trust, knowledge, and informal conversation to relate them to their GW performance. For this purpose, a social network analysis (SNA) was applied to Civil Engineering degree students. In addition, a correlation analysis between SNA metrics and GW grades was performed. The results show that beyond the way in which members are selected, there is a social structure that affects such selection and GW performance. This study presents information that can be used for instructors for a better GW selection that propitiates the development of soft skills in Civil Engineering students.

The Construction and Application of E-Learning Curricula Evaluation Metrics for Competency-Based Teacher Professional Development

“…In conclusion, the research results have proven that centrality metrics can quantify and evaluate the importance or influence of a specific object (i.e., nodes and edges) in the ECPC KCN related to e-learning curricula evaluation metrics for CB-TPD [25,26,28,29]. In the light of the research framework and procedures in this study, they will enable education practitioners and professionals, e-learning curriculum designers and developers, and education policy decision-makers to manifest structural network centrality metrics, structural relationships, and influence between nodes and edges to visualize abstract concepts and to explain the theoretical and practical implications of education-related occupational real Big Data (such as the O*NET OnLine database).…”

“…Centrality quantifies and evaluates the importance or influence of a specific object (node or edge) within a network [25,26,28], the analytic application of which has been presented in recent research. SNA and centrality metrics can be used to obtain quantitative evidence of learning acquisition outcomes in CBE, as measured by the evaluation of curricula in universities, which can be applied to collaborative learning methods, such as group work in the classroom, to achieve professional skills [29].…”

Impact of Social Media on Public Perception of Civil Engineering Projects

“…By utilising social media well, civil engineering projects can build more positive and productive relationships with the public, which in turn can lead to more inclusive and sustainable decisions. In addition, social media also provides an opportunity to educate the public about the importance of civil engineering projects (Castillo et al, 2021). By conveying clear and easy-to-understand information through social-media platforms, these projects can raise public awareness about the benefits and positive impacts they bring.…”