Teaching project management using a real-world group project

It is well established that an effective pedagogy for project management requires students to get real-world experience. The challenge in providing this when teaching undergraduate engineers is the dichotomy between achieving realism and maintaining sufficient simplicity to make the course tractable. A real-world group technology project at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) in New Zealand establishes essential non-technical attributes required by the engineering profession while covering key elements of the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK). This paper first shows how the project covers the knowledge required in project management and then presents the results of two years of data collected from students' reflection on their own learning. We have established a pleasing congruence across the years against the specific learning topics of team working skills, communication skills and personal working skills with an improvement in project management skills. A key finding emerging from our analysis is the importance of reinforcement learning and reflective learning. We show a key link between these two learning mechanisms and the project pedagogy. Further analysis shows the link between the project pedagogy and four skill areas acquired. Finally, our research has identified specific areas for us to focus on for subsequent years.