Arizona State University

Tempe, Arizona

A homework format is presented which facilitates independent, critical thinking on the part of the students and allows the instructor the opportunity to evaluate the students' efforts during the formative process and provide rapid feedback to the students to reinforce correct understanding. The homework format has been applied to two separate construction management courses. Keywords homework, e-mail, rapid feedback, positive reinforcement

One of the most difficult challenges in education is to provide adequate feedback to students in a timely manner. The maximum potential for learning occurs when the student receives an immediate response to his performance (Skinner 1968). Unfortunately, the typical classroom scenario does not lend itself to immediate response. Students are typically assigned homework, which is handed in, graded, and returned to the student at a later date, days or weeks after the homework was handed in. By then, the student has forgotten the point of many of the exercises and only cares about the evaluation of his performance, his grade. The principles which were the subject of the homework can easily have been long since forgotten (Armstrong, 1995).

A second difficult challenge lies in designing homework that forces the student to think critically about the assignment. Too many assignments are little more than a recitation of memorized facts or the application of a particular formula to a particular problem (frequently referred to by students as "regurgitation" or "plug and chug"). Frequently the problems bear little relationship to real world situations likely to be encountered by the students in life after completing college. The difficulty in designing homework which requires critical thought on the part of the student is the lack of opportunity for individual communication with each student. Communication is constrained by the limited number of class meetings, usually two or three meetings per week. It is also constrained by the opportunities for individual communication during class meetings. A typical class is 50 minutes, and if 30 or 40 students are in the class there is only about 1 minute available for each student. Class discussions are valuable, but do not cause each student to think independently. Nor do class discussions allow students the opportunity to test their ideas against those of the professor, nor to receive an evaluation of those ideas. In addition, many students choose not to participate in class discussions.

These constraints have led the authors to experiment with a different format for class assignments. This format emphasizes process rather than procedure, and is similar in nature to the Imperfect Solutions Homework Format (Armstrong, 1995). The assignments are structured such that the students do not have adequate information to complete the assignment. The students then must assess the problem and identify what additional information is needed. Frequent communication during the assessment of the problem is crucial, and e-mail is the primary vehicle for the communication process. This process appears to bring three valuable components to the homework system:

The assignment format is drastically altered from that normally associated with "homework". The format follows the following sequence:

An assignment is given to the class. The assignment normally requires the student to produce a product. Insufficient information is provided to the student in the assignment materials to produce the required product. A class discussion might be held when the assignment is given to introduce the assignment, and to be sure each student understands what is expected in the completed product.

The student then analyzes the assignment and information given. The student identifies what information he needs to complete the assignment, compares that information to what has been provided, and determines what deficiencies exist. The student then requests from the professor through e-mail the information which is needed to complete the assignment. The request must be specific.

The professor receives the e-mail request from the student, analyzes the request, and responds to the student, usually through e-mail. Larger documents included in the e-mail response may be sent as attachments. The response may be simply providing the information requested (even if the instructor believes the information to be irrelevant to the product), or it may include additional questions to the student about why the requested information is wanted, or what use the student is making of the requested information. The student then receives the response from the professor and reacts to it. Numerous e-mail messages may be exchanged before the student is able to correctly analyze and solve the problem. The email messages can be sent and answered at any time outside of class, and communication about the problem is not restricted to specific class periods. The time spent for each communication is also significantly less than if the student makes an appointment and visits the professor in his office, while the potential number of communications is much higher.

Generally the questions and responses are not shared with all students. The reason for this is to force each student to think critically about the assignment and to conduct his/her own assessment of the problem and identify critical information independently.

Evaluation of the student performance may be an ongoing process during the conduct of the assignment. This process allows the professor to observe the process which the student uses to reach final answers rather than just observing the final answers.

In a construction management class, the assignment was given to prepare the first request for partial payment for a construction contract in accordance with the contract documents. The payment request was to include all work completed through October 1997. The students were to assume the role of the project engineer, and the professor was to assume the role of the owner’s representative in processing the request.

The students had previously received a copy of the project manual, which included the construction contract, general conditions, and construction specifications. The students also had a construction schedule and estimate for the project available for their use.

Essential information which the students required to successfully complete the assignment included:

Some of this information was available to the students, some was not unless requested by the students.

After a general class discussion of the assignment wherein the process and implications of partial payments for work not completed was considered, the students were told to prepare the payment requests. If they had specific requests for information or questions, they could send a request for information (RFI) to the professor by e-mail with their request. During the next 5 days, the professor received 47 requests for information by e-mail from the 12 students in the class, with most requests containing multiple parts. Questions and responses were not shared among the students by the professor. Most students had difficulty relating to two specific areas in completing this assignment:

By using the email process, the professor was able to observe the thought process of the students as they worked on the assignment, and to give them rapid, individual feedback as they attempted the problem. The students also had a readily available source for asking questions and receiving information.

Prior to assigning this work, the professor had prepared a series of answers to questions which he thought the students would ask. However, the range of questions went far beyond what the professor had anticipated would be requested.

In the course of a senior-level foundations course, the students were asked to complete a series of group assignments (6 groups of 4 students) revolving around a single fictitious project. The project consisted of a series of improvements to a newspaper office and printing facility. The assignment was given in four separate pieces as the course covered new topics -- first an office addition requiring some shallow foundations, then a parking lot improvement, then a printing facility addition requiring deep foundations, and finally some braced excavations for the construction of below-grade parking. At the beginning the students were provided detail drawings for the existing building and a site plan showing the proposed improvements. The student groups were to serve as the general contractor for the project, which they have been asked to turnkey by providing design (by subcontract) and construction.

The students first job was to produce a request for a geotechnical report to provide all necessary design information and recommendations. This request was to take the form of a letter. The instructor then responded to this request as written, with no commentary except a bill for roughly the price of such work. Using this information, the student groups then had to complete an estimate and schedule for the soils portion of the work (for example, covering only the construction of the strip footings and floor slab for the office addition), a narrative description of their proposed process including equipment and material requirements, and a detailed description of the risks associated with the ground work. During the time between the receipt of the geotechnical recommendations and the submission of the report, the students were to submit additional requests for any information they felt was left out of the geotechnical report they received.

The instructor received very few requests for the first assignment (despite frequent prodding), and the resulting work products were very generic and lacked specific information relating to the project given. The estimates were conceptual only, and covered a wide range -- the lowest estimate was 1/15 the highest estimate. There was in general little connection seen between the schedule, the work plan, and the estimate, and the risks identified were apparently not addressed in either the schedule, the estimate, or the requests for information prior to completion of the assignment. One group submitted three requests for additional information, and actually asked for an enormous range of things such as structural plans and mechanical drawings which had minimal impact on the foundation construction. However, they also asked for topographic information and environmental site assessments, which would be very pertinent. The general lack of specific information was extensively discussed in class when the final reports were returned.

By the fourth project (the braced excavations), the student groups were very active in assessing their information needs. A few minutes at the beginning of several lectures was dedicated to discussing some requests received by the individual groups, and very few irrelevant requests were made. A total of 19 e-mail requests were received from the 6 groups, along with several discussions outside class. The final work products of the last assignment were much better integrated, and the range in estimates in the last assignment was much smaller -- the least being about 80% of the highest.

As described in the previous example, the students were required to share their assessment and preparation process with the instructor, which allowed for a much better assessment of the degree to which they understood and could frame the question. Furthermore, many interactions occurred concerning each phase of the project, to the point that many in-class examples in other aspects of foundation construction became related to this job site. Again, student requests went far beyond the expectations and prior preparations of the instructor. One additional benefit was the ability to measure the timeliness of student work on the project -- groups which began to consider and submit requests early did much better than groups which began to submit requests with very little time remaining.

The authors have concluded that presentation of class work in this fashion improved the instructor’s ability to assess student learning, critical thinking, and understanding of construction processes. The time spent on each assignment by the instructor also increased, but the time was considered a good investment with high return because of the increased speed of the feedback to the students. Using e-mail as a communication tool enhanced rapid communication between the instructor and students. Using rapid communication between students and instructor during the homework assignment provided the following advantages:

The authors have also concluded the following are limitations of using e-mail for rapid communication:

Armstrong, Brian (1995). The Imperfect Solutions Homework Format. IEEE Transactions on Education, 38 (3) 258-260.

Skinner, B.F. (1968). The Technology of Teaching. New York: Apelton-Century-Crofts.

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Last updated: September 09, 2004.