Students ‟ Perceptions of the Effectiveness of Teaching Aids in Construction Project Management

Abstract- Management is an inherent skill in every person, though people vary in their ability to explore this skill in them and execute it professionally. A sound theoretical knowledge of management is essential to explore this hidden skill and grow as a manager. The curriculum of Construction project management (CPM) is based on a variety of teaching and knowledge aids. Many topics in CPM are substantially theoretical. To optimize students ’ tendency to gain maximum understanding of the core concepts of CPM, it is imperative that students ’ perceptions are explored with respect to the effectiveness of the different teaching aids. To serve this purpose, this research identified six teaching aids through literature review, namely study of topics from books, case studies from other sources of literature, video documentaries, site visits, guest speakers, and assignments. Data was collected using a questionnaire survey and analyzed on MS-Excel 2010. Comparison of the relative importance index (RII) of the teaching aids was used to rank them from 1 to 6 ranging from the most effective to the least effective. Ranking of the six teaching aids according to their RII ranging from maximum to minimum yielded site visits as the most effective teaching aid, video documentaries as the second most effective teaching aid, study of topics from books as the third, case studies from other sources of literature as the fourth, assignments as the fifth, and guest speakers as the sixth most effective teaching aids for CPM. Curriculum and teaching method for the course of CPM based on this research can be considered as the chosen method of teaching by the students of engineering at the undergraduate level. This research offers valuable insight and useful knowledge for higher educatio