Paul Chinowsky, PhD
Associate Professor
Civil, Environmental, and Architechtural Engineering
University of Colorado at Boulder
UCB 428
Boulder, CO 80309-0428
303-735-1063
Paul.chinowsky@colorado.edu
Abstract
Are student group projects achieving their intended purpose of enhancing knowledge exchange between individual participants? This research addresses this issue by focusing on the question: Do group projects result in the development of “Learning Networks” where greater trust between the students is developed and enhanced knowledge exchange is occurring? The field of high performance group studies has indicated that the core element of a high performance team is the ability to freely exchange knowledge in addition to information. This research effort will analyze whether assigning group projects achieves the goal of enhancing knowledge exchange, and as such enhancing the participants learning experience, or are group projects primarily emphasizing academic and social interaction with less success in enhancing the desired knowledge exchange. A Social Network Analysis (SNA) will be applied to project groups in the Introduction to Building Construction course. The groups will be analyzed three times through the semester as small social networks. Through a questionnaire, each network will be queried with a set of questions developed specifically for studying project and organization teams. The results will then be graphically and numerically analyzed to determine how much reliance, trust, communication, and knowledge exchange are developing between the members and if the goal of creating “Learning Networks” is being achieved.