Blended Teaching and Agile Development of Project Management Courses: How Students Majoring in Engineering Learn Management

Students majoring in engineering are thought not to perform well in courses of management theory as they do not practice management theory in the classroom. The scripted teaching cannot attract the students’ attention. Moreover, agile development, which is common in the industry, has not yet been practiced in the classroom, resulting in a gap between industry and academia. We offered “Drone Module Programming” and “Agile Development” projects in management courses. Students in the class were divided into several teams based on different agile tasks. Each team was supposed to “Develop a facial recognition drone”. We provided the drone learning materials online and implemented flipped teaching so that students could learn and practice drone programming online. In the classroom, we had meetings on project management and wrote project documents with students. By implementing this innovative teaching method, a significant difference was found in the learning outcomes of the students studying project management theory.