Work in Progress: Introducing a coffee break to improve exam performance and reducing student stress in construction majors

Within education, one of the main challenges is to quantify student learning; Traditional exams are one of the most used methods in construction majors to try to measure the knowledge acquired by students in a specific subject related to the careers of civil engineer and architecture, however the results obtained by these exams can be affected by the stress and anxiety levels of the students at the time of take an exam, reduce performance and prevent a correct quantification of learning. To reduce the stress and anxiety caused by traditional exams in students, and improve their academic performance, the implementation of coffee breaks to the traditional exams is proposed as a possible solution, which implies a break during the exam where students are free to talk to each other and relax in an environment outside the place intended to take the exam. To quantify the impact of the coffee break on the students, surveys were conducted once the coffee break exam was over; the surveys contain questions referring to four stages: days before the exam, and before, during and after the coffee break. The results of the surveys allow us to demonstrate a decrease in the levels of stress and anxiety of the construction majors' students (civil engineering and architecture) at the time of taking the exam with coffee break, improving their performance. The analysis of the results allows us to consider the coffee break as a key element in the development of the exams applied in the academy, improving the evaluation methods in construction majors.