A Reflection on Construction Management Education in Lockdown

On Thursday 12 March 2020, the Irish government imposed the first national COVID-19 lockdown, closing all Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) in the process. Since that day, I have made three fleeting visits to the ghost campus of Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT). Otherwise, I have been engaged in the remote delivery of lectures from the attic room in my house in rural Tipperary. 

Finishing the second semester in lockdown from March 2020 was relatively straightforward, we had already completed 8 of the 12 teaching weeks, so it was a matter of focussing on finishing classes and preparing students for their assessments. For the return to college in September 2020, WIT made the decision to move all lectures and tutorials online, with only essential laboratories and practical classes taking place on-campus. Gone too, unfortunately, are our regular visits to local and national construction projects. For our undergraduates, meeting Construction Management professionals in their natural habitat and getting a feel for the “bricks and mortar” has always featured prominently in our programmes. 

Whilst I am comfortable using technology such as Moodle, Zoom & Teams, the challenges around real and meaningful virtual engagement persist. The motivation and engagement levels vary widely across the different cohorts; our part-time Construction Management group have buckets of experience and are hungry to learn and eager to discuss their experiences, leading to classes often running over their scheduled time. The full-time first year undergraduate, however, are unsure of themselves, setting out on the next major stage in their young lives, in their bedrooms at home under the watchful eye of anxious parents. This is not the college experience that they anticipated!

A major challenge for the final year undergraduate students is that many have taken the opportunity presented to them by remote delivery to continue in employment with their placement company, whilst also trying to juggle the increased demands of final year projects and their dissertation. Something has to give, and it is only as we move into the latter stages of the current semester that the pressure is building. I worry for their academic performance and more importantly their mental health because of stress and burnout. 

On a positive note, remote delivery has presented many opportunities for me to reflect on what I do and how I do it. I have revisited tried-and-tested assessment strategies, incorporating virtual collaboration into new group projects…the results so far have been mixed! One recent success was a class group who were tasked with organising a virtual Leadership in Construction Management panel discussion between themselves and three well-known industry leaders of their choosing…we learnt about the leader’s careers in the industry and their thoughts on a range of topics from COVID to Brexit, sustainability, and innovation. The students ran the discussion as well as a professional webinar which I attended, and it was the most inspiring morning I have spent online in quite some time! In the longer term, however, we will have to re-think our delivery of Construction Management programmes; online delivery and flexibility will no doubt increase, but we should never lose sight of the bricks and mortar.