Teaching Construction Management Capstone as a Remote Course

The capstone course for Construction Management Engineering Technology students (CON496), has been taught by guiding students to demonstrate integration of the various skills for drawing management and plan reading, technical calculations, materials selection, and project management (scope of work, estimating, risk management and scheduling) acquired in our 4-year program at Farmingdale State College. Until the onset of the pandemic, students were organized in groups and provided a project brief based on project requirements from a project sponsor (client), who was engaged as part of the project development process. The in-person course met weekly in a computer lab to provide hardware and programs to → Plan and participate in a field visit to review the project site. → Develop the scope of the project though a series of due diligence assignments. → Present preliminary findings for scope, WBS, and budget to the project sponsor. → Verify the details and data to develop a viable construction project plan → Present the final technical report to the project sponsor and course instructor. Like most colleges and programs, our courses went to remote teaching partially during the spring semester 2020 and migrated to remote teaching where practical for Fall 2020. The challenge to maintain the applied learning focus of the course and deliver it in a remote synchronous fashion was met by integrating the emergency as part of the development of the project, supplemented by self-directed activities integrated into the project scope and verification assign-ments. Integration activities included: → Developing the field trip in accordance with state workplace guidelines and using that activity as an introduction to examine the development of scope and cost for general conditions. → Using a program management contract to organize group activities and provide a concurrent examination of project activities to develop an awareness of ethics in construction management. → Using webinars from the EPA Sustainable Materials Management program and LinkedIn Learning as virtual tutorials for project development. → Coordinate class presentation and discussion with regularly scheduled group tutorials and the creation of an online Request for Information inquiry file that was available to the entire class for examination and discussion during scope development and verification. When the class evaluation becomes available at the end of 2020, it will be compared to previous class evaluations to determine if the modification of class activities to work within the constraints of remote class delivery was an effective change to the class program and make a list of best practices to assist with future syllabus development for capstone courses.