Use of Student Self Evaluations to Reinforce the Project Control Cycle.

When attempting to teach the project control cycle, the importance of 'evaluate' is difficult to convey to students yet is critical to students' academic and professional success. This paper represents a qualitative case study conducted with freshman construction management students to convey the importance of evaluating project performance -- regardless if the project was a success or not. According to the course textbook, the hardest step of the project control cycle to implement is the last step of document, report and evaluate. Of these, the evaluation portion is even more difficult for a team to accomplish. In order to instill in students early in their degree program the importance of evaluation both to their academic and professional success, an assignment was developed and implemented with students enrolled in an introductory construction management course. Participation in this assignment was optional. Out of 110 students enrolled in the course, 52 completed the optional assignment. Thematic analysis was conducted on a sample of the students' papers. The preliminary results provide insight into students' evaluation of their success during their first semester, which is a critical semester in students' college careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]