This study examined whether a feed-forward learning intervention and assessment activity improved student self-efficacy in undergraduate and postgraduate real estate development subjects. Self-efficacy is pivotal when learners must integrate quantitative analysis with judgment under uncertainty, yet little is known about how pre-task guidance cultivates this confidence in real estate education and other data-rich programs. Given the complexity of development feasibility analysis, students—especially those without industry experience—often feel overwhelmed. Because no instrument specifically measured self-efficacy in real estate development, we adapted and piloted an existing tool with 36 students, yielding a two-construct measure. We then implemented a pre–post design with 47 students to test the effect of the assessment design and feed-forward on specific and general self-efficacy. Results indicated significant gains, with effect sizes ranging from d = 1.19 for postgraduate students to d = 1.73 for undergraduate students. Students with limited professional experience benefited most, with significant gains among those with two or fewer years of experience. The findings underscore the importance of targeted interventions for complex academic tasks and position real estate classrooms as productive laboratories for advancing feed-forward research.
Moorhead et al. (2026) studied this question.