Communication students Claire Palay, Chad Robischon, and Jessica Naluai have been great additions to a directed research course on construction.

By Evan Yang -

A recent decision to add communication students Claire Palay, Chad Robischon, and Jessica Naluai to a directed research course that usually only includes architecture and construction management students has turned up positive results. Assistant professor in Communication, Gina Neff and Carrie Dossick, associate professor in construction management, are continuing their research on how Building Information Modeling (BIM), information communication software that turns blueprints into three-dimensional digital renderings, supports collaboration among builders, architects, engineers and contractors throughout the building process.

To augment her data-collecting efforts as well as provide students a learning experience, Neff had Palay, Robischon, and Naluai each join one of Dossick’s three teams (architecture, construction management, and dual degree students) in order to ethnographically observe communication methods.

This quarter, the students planned the renovation of the Seattle Parks and Recreation’s Headquarters building in Denny Park. The architecture and construction management students also had to plan the building of a new community center. Each team is proposing a unique approach to the renovation process: one team favors completely rebuilding everything, another team envisions a half-and-half rebuild and renovate plan, and another thinks renovation-only is best. Each team participated in three four-hour studio sessions a week at Magnuson Park.

“My role is literally supervising the communication students,” says Neff. “The communication students are helping to both study the process of small group communication in these teams and also look at how the students are working together to facilitate that communication. They are really actively participating and observing, and using qualitative research methods in the process.”

Because Palay, Robischon, and Naluai are seen as peers to Dossick’s students, they are well suited to observing interactions that may not emerge if a non-integrated authority like Neff or Dossick is present. Neff hopes to use her students’ data to publish more research articles with Dossick about communication in construction project teams.

In past research, Neff and Dossick have found that architects and engineers are not culturally inclined to share blueprints, 3D renderings from BIM, or even e-mail exchanges with an entire project team. Now, Dossick is more familiar with these issues and believed the addition of communication students would shake things up.

“This is the fourth year I have taught this studio,” says Dossick. “The teams are challenged to work across their disciplinary boundaries where cultural, as well as knowledge differences can create tensions that are challenging for professionals, let alone students, to overcome.”

Each team has one communication major that helped kick off the studio experience and facilitated “teaming agreements,” which laid out how team members would get in touch with one another outside of studio time for the project’s duration, as well as the manner in which someone’s ideas would be shared and discussed during studio time. From there, the communication students were required to attend one studio session a week with their teams and encourage them to talk about their collaborations, such as what aspects of the project were challenging and what methods of communication outside of studio time were most efficient and effective.

At times, when studio discussions get too contentious, the communication students have had to interject and mediate misunderstandings between architects and engineers. It’s these good, bad, and ugly moments that Neff and Dossick want students to record, and what the students learn the most from, as well.

“This was a great example of a win-win,” remarked Dossick. “As peers, [the communication students] helped the studio students reflect on their own collaboration and communication strategies in a non-threatening way. This is a wonderful example of how research can improve teaching and learning.”

The three students agree with Dossick’s assessment, though all agree that the experience was very new and stretched their abilities. “We’re kind of the guinea pigs and they’re like, ‘what do you see?’” said Palay. “My group has gotten along really well and collaborated really effectively.”

“I didn’t know exactly what to look for,” recalls Naluai. “When I went into it, I’d never done research like this before. For us, it was really interesting to observe and see interpersonal skills and different things we learned about in classes here in front of us in the real world.”

Robischon also welcomed the chance to apply knowledge from his past coursework into directed research. “Each week, we have to write up our field notes…but for us, besides the research aspect, it was an incredible experience and application of what we’ve been studying,” commented Robischon.

It seems safe to say that the decision to include communication students into the fold has been a success. “I hope to never teach this studio without communication majors again!” exclaimed Dossick.