Mary Panko

Toward a Learning-Styles Profile of Construction Students: Results from New Zealand

The purpose of this research was to identify a group learning-styles profile for construction students. The identification of a discipline-specific student learning-styles profile has important implications for college instructors. Such a profile aids educators in designing classroom teaching strategies. Individual learning-styles profiles were obtained from 153 construction students in New Zealand using the Productivity Environmental Productivity Survey (PEPS). These data were aggregated, and six PEPS factors were considered significant as the basis for a construction student learning-styles profile. The identified preferred learning-styles of construction students in New Zealand based on these six factors appear to have strong similarities to preferences of construction students in the United States and Hong Kong. The proposed group profile for construction students supports earlier calls for activity-based classroom teaching strategies using peer learning with a high degree of instructor monitoring. Construction students also appear to want highly structured course content and assignments that are presented graphically with little text.