An Instructional Feedback Technique for Teaching Project Management Tools Aligned With PMBOK

Contribution: An approach is presented to provide contextualized feedback for students using a project management (PM) tool. This approach covers the ten PM knowledge areas, guiding students through the planning of software projects. Background: Because software PM is unfeasible without the support of a PM tool there is a growing demand that these tools be taught in the higher education computer courses. Hence, several approaches already have been proposed to improve this teaching, such as educational PM tools or simulators, which facilitate the application of specific PM techniques and the treatment of their results. Another approach to improve the teaching of PM tools is instructional feedback, but little information is as yet available on how to provide instructional feedback when teaching software PM. Intended Outcomes: Instructional feedback, essential to helping students to learn, is based on an evaluation of their actions and decisions. To take advantage of this instructional approach, this paper proposes an instructional feedback technique to be employed in an instructional unit (IU) teaching PM tools aligned with the project management body of knowledge. Application Design: This technique was evaluated through an experiment carried out in undergraduate computer courses. Control and experiential groups were exposed to the same IU, with only the experiential group using the instructional feedback technique. Findings: The proposed feedback technique contributes to student learning, meeting students' need for better explanations to acquire a comprehensive understanding of PM theory and its practice.