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Globalization has led to increased demand for international education and education experiences by domestic students. However, the current body of knowledge regarding these experiences is scarce and mostly dominated by subjective accounts. This paper explores the research content and methods necessary to capture the impact of an abroad education and research experience. This ongoing study combines bibliometric analysis, literature review, and qualitative analysis of selected articles. Based on the body of knowledge in social sciences, student competencies impacted by an international academic intervention incorporate the following knowledge domains: (1) intercultural competence; (2) professional development; (3) intellectual growth; (4) academic development; and (5) personal development. A comprehensive review of existing approaches for assessing international student experiences was also contrasted against accepted research procedures. While a mixed-methods approach to collect data via survey instruments and face-to-face interviews can enhance the depth and breadth of the observations, collecting data at different points in time enables the capture of both immediate and sustained impacts on the student. Besides self-reported data, the evaluation of the students’ research advisors and peers should also be conducted. 

Challenges associated with the design and construction of the built environment are complex. Students need training to help them deal with this complexity and to help them explore and reframe problems early during project planning and design. Concept maps provide a visual representation of complex information and the relationships between this information. The research presented in this paper tested whether priming students to think in systems by asking them to draw concept maps changes how they construct problem statements. In total, 40 engineering students participated in the study. Half were asked to draw a concept map before constructing a problem statement about how to improve mobility systems around campus. The cognitive effort (i.e., time and words) students spent on the task and the number of unique system elements included in their problem statement were measured. Students that received the concept mapping intervention spent significantly more time thinking about the problem, developed longer problem statements, and included more unique elements of systems. These findings suggest using concept mapping can aid students’ conceptualization of complex problems. 

In construction applications, a robot is commonly seen a semi-automated tool or a piece of equipment that assists with specialized work tasks. However, as robots become more technically capable and widely available, they may be seen more as a teammate or co-worker that collaborates with human crews. Using a survey questionnaire, 63 project managers from two national construction management firms in the US were shown videos of three different applications of robotic systems, each exhibiting different characteristics, and were asked to share their perceptions of the robot. Through a between and across group comparison of their responses, we found that a robot was more likely to be seen as a teammate when its movement was less unpredictable, it was seen as more productive than human workers, it was considered durable, it remained constantly active, it took its surroundings into account before moving, it worked well alongside human workers, it was not unreliable, and it made the task more predictable. These findings identify clear challenges for human-robot teaming and the design of robotic systems for construction applications. 

Construction, the last major analog and craft manufacturing industry, is showing early signs of industrialization through the emergence of new robotic and automated systems that can perform construction tasks in situ. While much is understood about the technical and economic challenges to be overcome for widespread adoption of robotics, less is known about the human barriers to adoption, and much less is summarized. Considering the amount of human cooperation required by existing robotic applications, a comprehensive review of barriers that are cognitive or perceptual in nature using a systematic literature assessment methodology is warranted. However, such a review is not straightforward to design. While matters of cognition and perception as pertinent to construction and automation may be queried directly from the literature, there is no certainty that a review based on directly querying abstract phenomena (i.e., perception) could be comprehensive. Thus, systematically reviewing this topic calls for a robust methodology for the design of database queries. In this paper, we perform text analysis with the quanteda package for R in order to (1) understand the language composition of an initial review corpus, and (2) with that understanding design further queries to capture additional articles otherwise not possible through standard query design. Findings indicate that performing text analysis on a systematic review design can produce valuable insight into a review corpus and inform queries that capture additional unique literature relevant to the review.