Evaluating the Effectiveness of Extracurricular Online Workshops on Student Learning in Construction

Online courses allow for flexible learning opportunities critical to providing educational experiences to keep students engaged with their field of study. In this study, a virtual workshop was delivered to students with little-to-no knowledge of construction scheduling in a one-hour session. Eighty-seven students participated in the workshops. The participants were primarily undergraduate students enrolled in civil engineering, civil engineering technology, construction, and architecture programs. A Quasi-experimental approach was employed in this study, and pre- and post-workshop tests were administered to assess the effectiveness of the sessions, including the workshop learning outcomes. This paper discusses the workshop's effects on student learning outcomes by analyzing data from the pre- and post-workshop tests based on specific demographics, including gender, cumulative GPA, and students' prior construction and scheduling experience. This study also evaluates student performance based on the level of difficulty of the questions asked. The Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test to compare students' pre- and post-workshop answers to each scheduling question showed statistically significant improvements in all of the post-workshop answers regardless of the level of difficulty of the questions and the learning outcomes.