KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT CONCEPTS FOR TRAINING BY

PROJECT

An Observation of the Case of Project Management Education

Christine Michel and Patrick Prévôt

Laboratory LIESP, Univeristy of Lyon, INSA-Lyon

Bâtiment Léonard de Vinci 21, avenue Jean Capelle, F-69621, France

Keywords: KM, Expanded learning circle, Teaching by project, Project management education, Tutor activity.

Abstract: Project management education programmes are often proposed in higher education to give students

competences in project planning (Gantt’s chart), project organizing, human and technical resource

management, quality control and also social competences (collaboration, communication), emotional ones

(empathy, consideration of the other, humour, ethics), and organizational ones (leadership, political vision,

and so on). This training is often given according a training-by-project type of learning with case studies.

This article presents one course characterized by a pedagogical organization based upon Knowledge

Management (KM) concepts: knowledge transfer and construction throughout a learning circle and social

interactions. The course is supported by a rich and complex tutor organization. We have observed this

course by using another KM method inspired from KADS with various return of experience formalized into

cards and charts. Our intention is, according to the model of Argyris and Schön (Smith, 2001), to gain

feedback information about local and global processes and about actors’ experience in order to improve the

course. This paper describes precisely the course (pedagogical method and tutor activity) and the KM

observation method permitting to identify problem to solve. In our case, we observe problem of pedagogical

coordination and skills acquisition. We propose to design a metacognitive tool for tutors and students,

usable for improving knowledge construction and learning process organisation.

1 INTRODUCTION:

FORMATION WITH PROJECT

MANAGEMENT

Training in project management is growing

significantly in higher education, particularly in

engineering schools and postgraduate schools.

Indeed, the study of Thomas & Mengel (2008) on

the evolution of this discipline in higher education

shows than between 2004 and 2007 the number of

programmes concerned with project management

education increased from 6982 to 12500 (an increase

of 79%). Training in project management education,

on the other hand, did not significantly change

during this period, in spite of the recommendations

and suggestions of the Project Management Institute

(PMI). The study of Thomas and Mengel shows that

training in project management education must take

into account, at the same time, ‘hard’ and ‘soft’

competences. Hard competences correspond to

knowing how to plan the project (Gantt’s chart), to

organize the project management, to manage

resources, to control quality, to handle follow-up and

closure (receipt) of the project, to use tools for

automation with mature technology, to

include/understand and formalize the customer

requirements, to organize the reporting of the

project, and to learn from its errors or good practice

(Manzil-e-Maqsood & Javed, 2007). Soft

competences correspond to social competences

(collaboration, communication), emotional ones

(empathy, consideration of the other, humour,

ethics), and organizational ones (leadership, political

vision, and so on) (Thomas & Mengel, 2008;

Berggren & Söderlund, 2008; Crawford et al., 2006).

The type of learning best adapted to this

education is training–by-project (Bredillet, 2008).

The creation process of knowledge and competences

is based upon social interaction and direct

experimentation. It substitutes to traditional type of

learning a dynamic of co-development, collective

responsibility and co-operation (Huber 2005). The

learner is an actor and the principal author of his/her

learning. A significant enrichment arises from

his/her activity, both for him/her and all the other

129

Michel C. and Prévôt P. (2009).

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT CONCEPTS FOR TRAINING BY PROJECT - An Observation of the Case of Project Management Education.

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing, pages 129-134

DOI: 10.5220/0002288701290134

 SciTePress

learners. A consequence of this training is to

segment the class into sub-grouped projects, driven

by tutors. However, the coordination and

harmonization of their activities is extremely

difficult to realize when each group functions

autonomously, on different subjects or in real and

varied environments (for example, enterprises) and

when, moreover, the project is conducted over long

periods (more than four weeks). Moreover, these

contexts make the perception of individual and

group activity difficult, especially if no technical

support regarding information and communication is

used.

This article presents a project management

training course characterized by a pedagogical

organisation based upon training-by-project with

Knowledge Management (KM) concept. Indeed,

knowledge transfer and construction is made

according to a learning circle and social interactions.

As this is explained further, the course is supported

by a rich and complex tutor organization. In order to

analyze this formation, we have made an

observation through another KM method. Our

intention is, according to the model of Argyris and

Schön (Smith, 2001), to gain feedback information

about local and global processes and about actors’

experience in order to improve the course. This

paper describes precisely the course (pedagogical

method and tutor activity) and the KM observation

method permitting to identify problem to solve. In

our case, we observe problem of pedacogical

coordination and skills acquisition. We propose to

design a metacognitive tool for tutors and students,

usable for improving knowledge construction and

learning process organisation.

2 ANALYSIS OF THE PROJECT

MANAGEMENT COURSE

2.1 Organization of the Course

The course is composed of a theoretical presentation

on the principles and methods of project

management and their practical application to a

project (called ‘PCo’ for ‘collective project’) carried

out in groups (12 groups of eight students working

on different industrial needs). Envisaged by Patrick

Prévôt (Prévôt, 2008), the project management

course lasts six months and corresponds to an

investment of approximately 3000 student working

hours per project. The teaching objectives (Dpt GI,

2008) are to acquire hard and soft competences

previously cited. The teaching team is composed by

24 tutors (2 tutors technical and management per

project group), two managers (technical and

management) charged to coordinate the activities of

respectively technical and management tutors, a

teacher presenting theoretical concepts and a

coordinator/director responsible for the organization

of the learning and training of all the groups.

The project is structured in four phases (Perrier,

2008). (1) November : response to the call for

tender (formalization of the client’s requirements.)

(2) December : master plan (means, tools and

organization of the team project) definition of tools

to drive the project (dashboard) and rules to test the

quality of deliverables (rules of receipt). (3) January

to March : production (of a product or a study). (4)

Until mid-April : deliverable of project closure

writing : technical report which describes the

product and management report which is an

analysis, from the student’s point of view, of the

flow and problems of the project. The project is

closed by one dramatized presentation in front of all

the actors of the project

2.2 Teaching Model

This formation is specifically interesting according

the KM research point of view because the

experiential learning model used is closely linked to

the Kolb circle (Cortez et al., 2008) or the Nonaka

SECI circle (Nonaka et al., 2000) which explain the

dynamic construction of the knowledge . Training is

organized according to a loop of concrete

experience, reflective observation, abstract

conceptualization, presentation and active

experimentation. Knowledge is acquired via active

steps by the learner. Socio-constructive approaches

add the use of the personal and social construction

experiment.

More precisely in our course, the type of

learning is organized according to Berggren’s

expanded learning circle (see Figure 1) which adds

to the usual experiential model two concepts:

reflection/articulation and enaction (Berggren &

Söderlund 2008).

Reflection

Personnal Ex

erience

Articulation

Personal

and social

Action

Investi

ation

Enaction

Diffusion and implementation

Figure 1: Expanded learning circle.

The experience of the student is a result of the

education process constructed by following the

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130

small right circle or the large eight-form expanded

circle. The articulation phase corresponds to

debriefing discussion and debate driven by the tutor

(one face-to-face discussion per week) or student

project manager. The theoretical concepts of the

courses, for example, are discussed, analyzed and

understood through the reality of the project and the

technical tutors take a large part in animating these

phases. Conversely, the management tutors present

and discuss with team the ‘soft’ competences which

are needed or already exist. This work is strongly

linked with reflections phase (especially reflective

observations). Reflective observation are realized in

some cases in a tacit way after these discussions

with tutors or in a more formal way in the

management report or through the deliverables of

production. In this case, reflection is articulated with

conceptualization actions and helps to realize the

‘hard’ and ‘soft’ competences constructed. This is

also the occasion for each individual to express

his/her personal experience. By combining reflective

perception, reflections (helped with articulation

actions) and previous experience, the student is able

to understand and apply theoretical concepts in the

real project by following the tutor’s instruction

concerning personal and social actions useful for the

project. It helps to construct the student’s experience

regarding the teaching objectives. The student is

able also to choose and define his/her personal and

social actions and construct another unique

experience not so well formalized by the teaching

team.

Another characteristic of our teaching model is

to promote investigative action on the one hand, and

enaction and diffusion actions on the other. Indeed,

most of the course in project management consists

of realizing a well known project (case study). In our

case, investigative action is emphasized by the fact

that students have to solve a real industrial problem

without a predefined solution. It gives more of a

challenge and motivates knowledge construction.

The enaction and diffusion process is realized in

dramatized representations. They have the same

objective of supporting the reflection and

conceptualization needed for students to realize the

experience they gain, but also take part in a KM

diffusion process, between project team, teaching

team and scholar department. Students present here

their good and bad practices, and their feelings and

judgements about the formation and the tutors.

This circle of ‘experience, articulation,

reflection, action’ is the foundation of teaching-by-

project type of learning which resolution of a

problem is combined with socio-constructivism

theories (as previously illustrated by Gibbons’ point

of view). It helps with the construction of knowledge

and supports individual motivation. Indeed, the fact

of having to confront different points of view helps

the cognitive process and reinforces social

motivation. Often, formations in project

management education highlight the role of action

and experimentation. As does Berggren (Berggren &

Söderlund, 2008), we consider that articulation

between action and reflection is also fundamental

because it supports the evolution of behaviour and

we propose to use it in other contexts like lifelong

professional learning for example (Michel, 2008).

More than ‘trained technicians’, we want to form

‘reflective practitioners’ as Crawford said (Crawford

et al., 2006), who are able to choose how to learn

and evolve according to future unknown contexts.

3 OBSERVATION OF THE

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

COURSE

3.1 Method of Observation

The methodology used is adapted from MKSM

model and KADS model (Dieng et al., 2005). These

methods, starting from documents produced by an

organization and talks with the actors, model

complex industrial systems by identifying and inter-

relating various concepts: product, actor, activity,

rules and constraint. Each concept is defined on a

card. The ICARE (information, constraint, activity,

rule, entity) cards describe any object precisely

intervening in the process. The RISE (reuse,

improve and share experiment) cards describe any

problem occurring during the process and specify

the contexts, solutions suggested or

recommendations. The elements described in the

ICARE and RISE cards were organized overall in a

chart which shows their interrelationships. The

adaptation of methods MKSM and KADS to our

context was carried out with the assistance of the

director of Airbus’s KM service (Toulouse), Rene

Peltier.

The effective observation was carried out by a

group of fifth year Industrial Engineering students as

the framework of a KM course. The student used

various sources of observation: the formal

documentation produced within the framework of

PCo (management report, tutor guides, rules of

evaluation), experience feedback (return of

experience called REX)) and transfer of expertise

(expertise transfer called EXTRA) of the actors of

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT CONCEPTS FOR TRAINING BY PROJECT - An Observation of the Case of Project

Management Education

131

the project. The REX were provided by the students

themselves (they gave feedback on their own

experience of the previous year when they were

involved with the PCo) and by tutors. The EXTRA

was provided with the director of the formation and

tutors managers in order to formalize precisely their

activities and responsibilities. The use of the

student’s REX was made directly by expressing their

experiments in ICARE and RISE cards. This REX

was made with 60 students (over two years) who had

been involved with a PCo. The tutors’ REX and

EXTRA were done according to semi-directing talks

directed and registered by students and then used to

write ICARE and RISE cards. The information was

provided by the director, six tutors and three

students currently leading projects in the PCo

formation.

3.2 Analysis of Problems Related to

Tutor Activity

The problems experienced were expressed or

described in 36 RISE cards. The majority relate to

the management of the team work by the team itself

and the teaching organization of the project.

Nevertheless, many of cards mentioned problems

concerning evaluation, presence, coherence and

coordination of tutors. The students expressed a

feeling of injustice concerning the individual

evaluation because the notation is the same for all

the members of the project (with about + or -2 points

according to their investment), even if the students

have invested themselves little or less than others.

The tutors also universally expressed their

impotence as regards being able to concretely

evaluate the students individually. This impotence is

explained by the intuitive and tacit character of the

evaluations, by the lack of traceability of the

students’ actions, and by the absence of discussion

with their colleagues. Some students underlined

deficit of communication or missing presence of

some tutors. Others mentioned deficit of coherence,

coordination and diffusion of information

concerning, for example, the instructions (which

were described as ambiguous or contradictory) given

to the various groups or concerning the way to

practically apply the theoretical concepts.

If we observe more precisely the tutor activity

we can said that this problem is not surprising.

Indeed, the roles of the tutors are varied. Indeed, we

describe in (Michel, 2009) and according to Garrot’s

taxonomy (Garrot, 2008) how tutors play various

role like social and intellectual catalyst, mediator,

individualizer or autonomizer for soft skills

acquisition, or the role of relational coach for

working in group and leadership skill, and also roles

of pedagogue, content expert, ‘evaluator’ and

‘qualimetror’ (i.e. quality measurer) for hard skills.

Moreover the tutor number is large (24 tutors and 3

managers), and they have to work to a unique and

non reproductible project. They work with student

most of time in face-to-face and no organisation,

communication or capitalization tool is used. For

example, no specific tool for supervision is currently

proposed to the tutors for the follow-up of student

activities or their notation. The appreciation of

student activity is done in an implicit way, according

to the number and the quality of face-to-face

student–tutor interactions. In terms of

communication and coordination, each tutor works

individually with his/her group and does not

communicate systematically with his/her technical

or management opposite in order to have a complete

vision of the group activity.

(Billois et al., 2009) have more specifically

studied how to solve these problems with technical

support based upon dashboards. Dashboards are

devices of supervision built by the project leader in

the second step of the PCo. It’s a team supervision

tool given to student various information (total

working time, delays, etc.) used to help the

progression of the project. We briefly present in the

next section some results of this study.

3.3 Study of Technically Supported

Solutions

The study of the use of dashboard (Billois et al.,

2009) showed that this tool is in fact little used. It

exclusively remains a theoretical exercise, carried

out by the leader of the project and almost never

consulted by the other members of the project.

In order to improve the dashboard and the

pedagogical process, Billois et al (2009) consider

useful to add other communication and supervision

function. Indeed, to complete the historical

dashboard which corresponds to Team feedback

supervision tool (highlight by a bold rectangle), he

propose an evolution with the opening-up of a

student feedback supervision tool presenting

individual indicators (morale, working hours, and so

on), the opening-up of personal and team blog and

view of tutor’s schedule to facilitate contact.

We models all the propositions in Fig 2. The

mode of consultation (publication

control/reading/writing) is represented by various

arrows.

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Projet leader

tutor

Student

Team feedback

Moral, Skills,

Working time,

Activities, work in progress

Student

feedback

Information

capture

Schedule

Team Zone

Personal zone

Read/Write

Read

Publication/leader control

Team Blog

Personal

Blo

Figure 2: Advanced dashboard.

The evolutions were submitted to the tutors and

to three project leaders currently in formation. Type

of use and opening-up is considered as useful

because it permit to student to train a management

tool and so, by experiencing it, to better understand

hard competences or soft ones (like team force for

example). Spaces for expression regarding the

project and each member were particularly

appreciated both by the tutors and the project

leaders. Indeed, the project leader give the example

of the ‘state of mind indicator’ of the ‘incident

indicator’ which gain to be contextualized so as to

allow the tutor and the project leader to be aware of

situations, to understand the reasons for the

dysfunction and to initiate a dialogue with the

members of the project. Reciprocally that makes it

possible for the members to be aware of the state of

mind of the project leader and thus to be more

quickly given responsibilities. A space for

communication intra-project does not seem desirable

to the student whereas it is judged to be a good idea

by the tutors. Concerning the historical dashboard

(Team feedback), the actors are overall satisfied

with the current type and form of the indicators and

propose a small addition. The students wish, for

example, to have the assistance of there tutors or

project leader concerning with the skills needed for

the project realization and strategies to develop them

(like example for training or book to reading for

example). In a more general way, they are asking for

more discussion and formalism on this point. This

would reassure them by providing a global vision

about their mission and would allow better

distribution of the training and activity for each

member of the project.

4 DISCUSSION AND

CONCLUSION

The studies of the project management course by

KM method and especially the REX observation and

the RISE cards show a lot of waiting concerning the

support of tutors’ activities. All actors are asking for

new means of coordination and collaboration with

the students and between tutors. Tutors express

difficulty with playing their teaching role. The

solution under consideration is to design an

‘advanced’ dashboard (supervision, communication

and collaboration tool) adapted from the current

ones. This solution would make provide a support

for several of the tutors’ roles, in particular those of

pedagogue, evaluator and ‘qualimetror’ (i.e. quality

measurer), by tracing the activities of the student

and having direct access to their contributions. The

use of the ‘advanced’ dashboard is particularly

adapted to our teaching model, which is based on the

expanded learning circle (Berggren & Söderlund,

2008) of Kolb (Cortez et al., 2008). The articulation

between conceptualization and experimentation

concerns various pedagogical tasks and activities

and is usual in all project management training. The

originality of our approach is to also consider

articulation between action (experimentation or

conceptualization) and reflexive practices. Indeed,

like Berggren (Berggren & Söderlund, 2008) we

think that project management education training

highlights the role of experimentation and that it is

necessary to balance teaching action with reflection.

Indeed, this combination is well placed to

accompany an evolution of behaviour in terms of

skills (management, communication, collaboration

and all ‘soft’ competences) and natural reaction (to

be able to learn how to learn and evolve in

surprising or unknown situations) by supporting the

students’ capacity to self-critically analyse. This

capacity results mainly from the training activities

carried out with the tutors and must be more

supported. The dashboard proposition presented is

good and must be useful but the indicators have to

be rethought. Nevertheless, the results of

observation and discussion with tutors and students

have allowed us to realize that the dashboard takes

on the role of a metacognitive tool. According to

Azevedo (Azevedo, 2007) the term ‘metacognitive

tool’ serves two goals: (1) acknowledging the role of

metacognition in learning complex topics with

CBLEs (computer based learning environments) and

(2) extending the original classification of

“computers as cognitive tools” by acknowledging

the complexity of self-regulatory processes during

learning with CBLEs. He states that the learners’

self-regulatory processes may consider: cognition

(e.g., activating prior knowledge, planning, creating

sub-goals, learning strategies), metacognition (e.g.,

the feeling of knowing, judgment of learning,

content evaluation), motivation (e.g., self-efficacy,

task value, interest, effort), or behaviour (e.g.,

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT CONCEPTS FOR TRAINING BY PROJECT - An Observation of the Case of Project

Management Education

133

engaging in help-seeking behaviour, modifying

learning conditions, handling task difficulties and

demands). Several of these concepts appear in the

dashboard and need to be refined, such as motivation

(which is global to the team) or cognition (which is

currently represented very superficially by the ‘skill

acquired’). Others clearly are missing and

correspond to tutors’ or students’ needs. We think,

for example, of the need for judgements on the skills

acquired, or the need for collaboration in the

definition of training strategies which concern the

fields of cognition and metacognition. Lastly, this

type of tool can directly contribute to the realization

of the management tutor’s roles of ‘meta-catalyst’,

individualizer and autonomizer. Indeed, because it is

impossible currently to automatically have the

smoothness of perception of the tutor, concerning

the social form of the team and the complexity of

human psychologies, we think that the teaching

activity of debriefing must continue to be carried out

in face-to-face discussion, as is currently the case.

Nevertheless the tutor must be able to be helped in

his individual perception and his memorizing by

technical supports like the content of personal and

collective zones of expression and feedback.

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