Developing a Kinesthetic Intervention for the Development of Expertise in Structural Engineering

Active learning is well-established as a more effective approach than passive teaching methods, such as traditional lectures. Kinesthetic learning is a relatively new subcategory of active learning, where learning is facilitated through movement or interaction with props. There is great potential for kinesthetic learning as a pedagogical technique for certain concepts. This study looks at whether a kinesthetic intervention can promote students’ development of expertise in construction site hazard identification. Every year, ~1,000 construction workers in the U.S. die due to hazards and working conditions. Hazard identification is difficult to teach in undergraduate curricula as access to construction sites is limited and pictures are not representative of the real, three dimensional, world. Our study uses a 3-D printed model to supplement a hazards identification lecture. This work represents a pilot study designed to prepare the intervention for classroom use. The pilot study included two methods: (1) think-alouds to evaluate the usability of the model and (2) a small-scale control versus intervention study to gather preliminary data. Think-alouds revealed a few pieces of the model which needed to be tweaked to provide more stability for the whole model. Our pilot intervention study showed areas of improvement in the wording of the survey. Most people wrote down particular objects instead of specific hazards, and subsequently the language has been adjusted to be more specific. These results inform the design of a larger study to be conducted at Oregon State University in their Temporary Structures course. The data collected will allow us to determine whether kinesthetic learning is effective in promoting expertise development for students in construction site hazard identification that can be translatable to other disciplines, including process safety.