Educational Prediction Markets: Construction Project Management Case Study

Abstract

Effective teaching of engineering concepts relies both on carefully designed lesson plans that meet specific learning outcomes and on classroom activities that students find engaging. Without student engagement, even the best designed plans will fail to meet their outcomes. In other words, students need to be actively involved in the learning process. The objective of this paper is to present a case study of applying a novel active learning method, specifically educational prediction markets (EPM), for teaching project management classes at a major research university. This method was investigated for its effectiveness in engaging students and promoting learning of probabilistic reasoning without explicit teaching. Student surveys, following the EPM implementation, revealed both advantages and disadvantages. The two key benefits reported by the students were: (1) providing better connections between the materials taught in the class and realities of construction projects; and (2) increasing overall interest and enthusiasm in learning about project risk management as a result of the gamelike nature of the process. The primary disadvantage was disengagement by a subset of students because of perceptions that fellow students were manipulating the market results.