Course Valuing, Approaches to Study and Academic Performance: The Case of Undergraduate Construction Management Classes

To improve student success, instructors need to understand how students feel about their own learning and how much responsibility they take for it. This information is crucial to teach and develop more effective courses. Yet, very often, instructors in higher education focus on content learning exclusively. While summative assessment of learning in these courses is important, content learning is not the only measure of educational outcomes. This study used the Course Valuing Inventory (CVI) (Nehari, 1978) adapted for Construction Management (CM) classes to evaluate cognitive-content, affective-personal and behavioral learning in students taking these classes. Furthermore, this study examined the relationship between course valuing scores, approaches to study (ASI) and course performance. Results indicated that the CVI can be adapted for use in CM classes. However multiple regressions run in this study predicting final course grade from seven predictor variables: student class standing, student self-reported GPA, whether or not the course was required for the student’s major, likelihood of student continuing with their current major, grade that student anticipated receiving in the class, ASI score, and CVI score, revealed that CVI scores were not significant predictors of final course grades.