Abstract:

The Department of Construction Management & Technology in the Dublin Institute of Technology has recently moved to semesterisation. Allied with this has been a tendency to move away from modules being examined by the traditional end of year examination. This was typically a three hour exam worth 100%. In my own discipline of financial management it is proposed to examine students in the form of a project and presentation worth 30% and an end of year examination representing 70%.
Such a project would involve the students working in groups and presenting their work to their fellow students and academic staff. Each group will mark the efforts of the other groups with this having an input into the final mark. The lecturer will also award a mark and the results will be compared. One purpose of the exercise is to encourage teamwork and the group dynamics therein. Another aim is to develop presentational and communication skills. Excellence in presentation skills is essential for the construction professional today.
The students will be asked for feedback to get their opinion on this form of reviewing their peers. This will take the form of a survey conducted electronically. Such feedback will be analysed in detail. It is also proposed to monitor the different observations of full time students versus part time students. In general part time students tend to be older, more mature and are actually working in the construction industry. Such students will have different viewpoints and different issues such as time limitations in relation to group working.
The aim is to challenge the student and examining their knowledge of a key financial aspect of the construction industry and their ability to relate this to their peers and others. It will also gather feedback from students on this method of assessment and examine the different issues prioritised by both full and part time students. All results will be published in this proposed paper.

Keywords:

Financial management, peer review, presentation skills, teamwork, construction.