PROJECT MANAGEMENT LEARNING IN A COLLABORATIVE
DISTANT LEARNING CONTEXT
An Actual On-going Experience
Enrique Crespo, Fernando Alba-Elías, Ana González-Marcos
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of La Rioja, Logroño, Spain
Joaquín Ordieres-Meré
ETSII, Technical University of Madrid, c/ José Gutiérrez Abascal 2, 28006 Madrid, Spain
Manuel Castejón-Limas
Department of Mechanical, Informatical and Aerospace Engineering, University of León, León, Spain
Keywords: Collaborative learning, Distant learning, Web 2.0, Project management, Project.net, Bologna agreement.
Abstract: The goal of this paper is to show the results of an on-going experience on teaching project management to
grade students by following a development scheme of management related competencies on an individual
basis. In order to achieve that goal, the students are organized in teams that must solve a problem and
manage the development of a feasible solution to satisfy the needs of a client. The innovative component
advocated in this paper is the formal introduction of negotiating and virtual team management aspects, as
different teams from different universities at different locations and comprising students with different
backgrounds must collaborate and compete amongst them. The different learning aspects are identified and
the improvement levels are reflected in a rubric that has been designed ad hoc for this experience. Finally,
the effort frameworks for the student and instructor have been established according to the requirements of
the Bologna paradigms. This experience is developed through a software-based support system allowing
blended learning for the theoretical and individual’s work aspects, blogs, wikis, etc., as well as project
management tools based on WWW that allow the monitoring of not only the expected deliverables and the
achievement of the goals but also the progress made on learning as established in the defined rubric.
1 INTRODUCTION
The actual implementation in Spain of the new
educational model – established by the Bologna
process in the European Higher Education Area
(EHEA) – has brought to life a prolific framework of
innovative educational initiatives (Ivaniskaya et al.,
2002; Schoner et al., 2007).
This paper reports one of those initiatives, an
experience based on the usage of Web 2.0 tools, a
technology that opens doors to new fields for ample
user collaboration (Moursund, 1999), in the project
management learning area. The goal of this
experience is to develop a Bologna oriented learning
framework for effectively teaching the basics of
project management to grade students with no prior
experience and the added difficulty of doing so
under a competitive context, as these students are
simultaneously following other courses. In order to
achieve that goal, an approach that combines
theoretical contents, individual applied tasks, usage
of software systems and a strategy of learning by
doing it is proposed. More specifically, the interest
of this experience is to provide basic project
management competences by following a
monitoring and evaluation approach.
This course was traditionally designed according
to an expository paradigm accompanied with
exercises to directly apply a particular technique or
use a specific tool. A more applied approach in
project management teaching is to assign a project to
a team of students in order to eventually evaluate
105
Crespo E., Alba-Elías F., González-Marcos A., Ordieres-Meré J. and Castejón-Limas M..
PROJECT MANAGEMENT LEARNING IN A COLLABORATIVE DISTANT LEARNING CONTEXT - An Actual On-going Experience.
DOI: 10.5220/0003336701050110
In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2011), pages 105-110
ISBN: 978-989-8425-50-8
Copyright
c
 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

those students by means of the quality of the
deliverables provided as a result of developing that
project. With this approach the quality of the results
is measured, but the proper usage and application of
the different project management methodologies
remain unsupervised, at least formally.
A previous work (Cobo-Benita et al., 2010)
already tackled the difficulties of estimating the
effort of both students and instructors in a
competitive collaborative environment. The present
paper focuses, instead, on monitoring the aspects
related to the management dimension as well as to
improve the traceability of the different team
members’ performance by means of a forensic
analysis of the records stored in the software-based
support system. Moreover, the experiences aims to
enhance other management competences such as
those related to negotiation and communication.
As the project is developed in a context of
geographical offshoring –with teams comprising
students from different universities at different
locations and different backgrounds– a careful
selection of the software-based support system is
mandatory. This extends the pursued goals with a
few ones that must be achieved in order to start this
experience on the first semester of the course 2010-
2011.
 Formal definition of the requirements that a
software tool for collaborative project
management in education must fulfil in order
to have a positive impact on the competences’
acquisition of the students
 Selection of the most suitable Web 2.0 tool for
simulating an actual experience of project
development in a collaborative environment
with distant team members from different
universities.
 Definition of a set of objective features for its
use in the evaluation of the students developing
a project experience in a collaborative context.
 Measurement of the impact on the student’s
acquisition of competences related to project
management.
 Evaluate the goodness of the Web 2.0 software
tools in the context of this experience.
 Measurement of the impact of the Web 2.0
collaborative software tools on competences
acquisition.
Section 2 presents a brief review on related
works. Section 3 describes the methodology used.
Section 4 describes the technological aspects
involved in the experience. Finally, section 5 shows
the conclusions obtained up to now developing this
on-going experience.
2 A BRIEF REVIEW ON
RELATED WORKS
Problem-Based Learning (PBL), where student’s
activities are structured around solving open-ended
problems, has proved to be an excellent method for
developing new forms of competencies (Graff and
Kolmos 2003, Kolmos and Kofoed 2002). Project-
Based Learning (called here PjBL to distinguish it
from the acronym for problem-based learning)
follows a similar pedagogic approach than PBL, but
its organizing principle is one or more open-ended
projects. A PjBL environment enables students to
draw upon their prior knowledge and skills, brings a
real-world context to the classroom, and reinforces
the knowledge acquired by both independent and
cooperative group work (Schmidt, 1993).
Research has been focused too on the context
that facilitates and supports the motivation and
implementation of PjBL (Lam et al., 2010), as well
as in the use of the PjBL approach on scientific
teaching (Cavanaugh and Dawson, 2010). Rashid et
al. (2009) proposed a project management approach
used in a multilevel scheme by promoting an
integrated framework for diffusion on distant
learning. The framework is based on an integrated
systems-engineering approach in the light of the
diffusion of innovation theory utilizing techniques of
project management and Blooms-taxonomy.
PjBL is an interesting alternative as well in
capstone courses where the innovation comes from
the interdisciplinary nature related both to the
instructor and to the students (Rhee et al 2010).
Moehr et al. (2004) provided different solutions
in the context of distant learning strategies,
including valuable discussions. General references
on the usage of Web 2.0 software tool for PjBL can
be found in Graaff et al. (2003). Mehvar (2010)
studied the procedure related to synchronous distant
learning. Technological approaches have explored as
well the agent-based field for improving the current
distant teaching approaches (Bouhadata and Laskri,
2008).
In the light of the aforementioned contributions,
the present paper advocates the combination of
several of the results presented in those works. The
most significant differences with them are:
a) PjBL focused on an actual multi-factor problem
involving many different dimensions. The
students do not work in a lab-controlled
environment but in one where the results by
themselves are unknown and, moreover, they
will depend on the decisions made by the
development team and their creativity.
b) The focus of the experience is put on the
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project management dimension, which is the
discipline to learn, and not on the problem to
solve, which is considered as a mere
instrument. The software system serves as a
support tool in order to formalize these aspects.
c) The collaboration amongst different teams
reinforces the acquisition of competences such
as those related to negotiation, e.g.. The
formalization of these aspects is performed by
means of a detailed rubric.
d) The learning process aims at enhance the
acquisition of competences that have been
identified as relevant by the practitioners of the
field, as has been remarked by the International
Project Management Association (IPMA)
(Caupin et al., 2006).
3 METHODOLOGY
The approach followed in the courses of the
different universities involved (Technical University
of Madrid –UPM–, University of León –ULE– and
University of La Rioja –UR–) is structurally similar.
The course begins by asking the students to propose
the definition and configuration of a solution to the
problem to solve. It must be ensured that the
situation proposed allows multiple solutions, the
need of multicriteria decision making processes,
enough milestones to consider, and that it involves
different technologies and disciplines, etc. In brief,
that it complies with the criteria of the CIFTER
model (GAPPS, 2006) to evaluate the complexity of
a project.
The teams from UPM comprise students with
selected different profiles –backgrounds in
mechanical engineering, industrial engineering,
electrical engineering, materials engineering, etc. –
as those teams have the responsibility of defining the
global solution. The teams from the other
universities work as contractors developing specific
tasks of the project. Thus, these are formed with
students that share a common background and that
work as a team of specialist to solve specific
problems.
The project manager (PM) has the responsibility
of organizing the work and leading the team. It is
chosen after estimating the leadership features of the
candidates by means of the Blake and Mutton test,
the negotiating skills by using the NEGO test and
the negotiating style by using the DECTI test. The
results of their personal tests are provided to the
students so that they can choose their best PM at the
kick off meeting according to their initial skills.
Once the PM is chosen, the PM must define the
work breakdown structure (WBS) and negotiate with
the other teams –the contractors– their participation
according to the scope that it is being defined. This
negotiation is developed in a competitive mode with
the rest of the teams. The success in forming the
consortium, its suitability according to the WBS, the
price of the contracts and the benefits expected are
evaluated at this stage. The negotiation is developed
within the software-based support system in order to
eventually analyze the critical factors of the
negotiation.
The PM assigns the different tasks to the rest of
the members. The performance of the team is
monitored on a weekly basis by means of the
software-based support system. The minutes of the
meetings and the evaluation of the team members
made by the PM are supervised as well.
The instructors pay attention to the whole set of
teams involved in the experience. This is done by
impersonating the role of three different virtual
consultants. The first role is the client’s consultant
whose main interests are the quality of the final
product. There is a second role for a technological
consultant that helps the team by providing them
specific help related to technological aspects that
might be too complex for the students. The third role
is a management consultant that helps the teams
with those aspects related to the use of the software-
based support system. This allows to eventually
performing a comparative analysis on performance
and learning.
Finally, once the job is done, a presentation is
made to show the results to the client. This
presentation is focused on remarking the most
relevant aspects of the experience from the point of
view of the client –the main strengths in business
terms– and the most important conclusions obtained
by the team related to the development of the
experience itself.
The evaluation process aims at considering many
different dimensions. It makes use of a rubric
oriented to measure the improvement in both the
transversal and specific competences. As far as the
transversal competences are concerned two different
kinds of competences are considered: those related
to leadership or the capacity of adaptation to new
scenarios –systemic competences–, and those related
to the capacity of analysis and synthesis, oral and
written communication, information management
skills, problem resolution, etc. –instrumental
competences–. Amongst the specific competences,
those related to the capacity of organizing, planning
and controlling the project are considered.
To determine the performance on each of the
individuals’ competences different indicators and
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achievement levels have been established for every
role: defective, acceptable, expected, optimum. The
evidences related to these performances are
collected by different means (WBS, minutes of the
meeting, etc.). These are evaluated by using the
software-based support system.
Let’s consider, for illustrative purposes, the
competence related to the capacity of organizing the
project. For this competence the indicators
‘definition of the scope of the project’ and
‘definition of the resources needed’ are used. The
first indicator is measured on the team members by
using the software-based support system and
investigating how the individual’s contributions are
incorporated to the system. In the case of the project
managers it is measured by evaluating the quality of
the WBS developed, its coherence with the time
management plan and the level of agreement that
they have strived to achieve. The evaluation of the
rest of indicators and competences in the model
proposed is made in a similar manner as the one
detailed.
4 IMPLEMENTATION
The first step regarding the implementation had to
consider the selection of the best software tool to
provide the student a common place for interaction,
communication and collaboration.
The following parameters have been taken into
account in order to choose the most adequate
software environment. They are, in descending order
of relevancy:
1. ePMO (Enterprise Program Management Office)
2. Collaborative multiuser Web 2.0 environment
3. Open-source
4. Number of collaborative tools provided (Blogs,
wikis, forums, automatic e-mail reports,
document repository and forms to name a few)
5. Real-time supervision of the work developed by
the students and forensic analysis
6. Performance logs
7. Security management, roles and permissions
8. Usage flexibility
9. Multiple business capability in the same
application
10. Management of multiple projects
11. Intensive use capability, with about 200 hundred
students on the experience
12. Documentation management
13. User and administrator documentation provided
14. Workflow
15. Simple resource assignation
16. Broad range of reports for the project supervision
17. Ease of communication channels between virtual
businesses
According to the parameters listed above, the
selected software environment was Project.net
(http://www.project.net). This software facilitates
the students the use of the different roles that coexist
in the management of a project, enabling the team
members to communicate and work together even
though they might be located at distant locations.
4.1 Work Environment
The proposed work environment is the adaptation of
the already presented course methodology but
improved by the use of the selected software.
The role-play consists on the virtual creation of
two consultancy companies and a variable number
of technical companies, depending on the number of
students involved in the experience. There are as
well a number of businesses for the communication
amongst the students and the instructors.
Every company must generate its own project
and must define the tasks to work on, as well as
assign resources, define task durations, so that the
total length should be equal to the time available for
each student.
The collaborative tools provided by Project.net
will be used as follows:
 Wiki: Knowledge database.
 Blog: The team members have a blog to record
activities perform or completed tasks.
 Documents: Repository of documents with a
versatile document management system.
 Discussion groups: they allow the team
members to consolidate ideas, points of view,
and thoughts as well as to share their questions
with other team members.
 Automatic e-mail notification for a quick
transmission of the information to the whole
team.
The PM can order a global view for the project
(Figure 1), allowing him the information on the
status of the project regarding resource load,
scheduled tasks, meetings and so on. This view
helps the PM as it allows focusing in specific
problems, as required.
Each student should report, using the software-based
support system, the time dedicated to each task,
giving as a result the total number of hours the
student dedicated to this experience. This provides a
log of the progress made and the time consumption
for every task.
As expected, a number of classical tools for planning
and monitoring the project are available in order to
support the PM actions (Figure 2).
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Figure 1: Global view for one running project.
Figure 2: Planning and monitoring view for the project.
4.2 Supervision and Evaluation of the
Acquired Competences
Having real-time information about the project’s
status available to the instructor provides
opportunities for optimal supervision. This can help
the instructor correct deviations from solutions
likely to lead to the success of the project.
The evaluation is being performed in a
continuous manner along the whole course. It is also
possible to allow the students to evaluate their
colleagues. There is the possibility for the system to
make a report in a periodical basis for posterior
analysis.
Eventually, at the end of the experience a final
evaluation is made considering the activity reports
recorded, like a post-mortem analysis.
All these tools make possible to evaluate,
according to the established rubrics, the individual
performance, the quality of the project management
and the products carried out. With the activity
tracking of the projects and the rest of the tools
provided by Project.net it is possible to perform a
forensic analysis of the work made by the students
so as to obtain data which can be useful in order to
perform an objective evaluation of the performance
of the team and the team members, particularly on
the matter of project management competences
acquisition.
5 RESULTS
5.1 Work Methodologies on the Project
Management Area
Even though the web tool allows different
approaches and structures, specific added value is
provided by identifying roles, procedures, bid
management, progress monitoring and many other
methodological issues. The selected procedures
foster the evaluation of indicators as required for
adopted rubrics.
5.2 Collaborative Learning
The students acquire the competences not only
through the traditional channels but also by the
interaction amongst them while using the
collaborative tools that Project.net provides. Indeed,
there are aspects of the organizational culture that
endows the students with a formal work
methodology that makes them accustomed to think
about what must be done and what effort must be
made in order to achieve a specific goal. Moreover,
as the deliverables obtained by some members might
be inputs in the processes assigned to others, the
dependency and connectivity of the task is usually
very significant. The software-based support system
itself promotes the traceability by allowing multiple
versions and complete data.
5.3 Project’s Products
The students acquire the concept for the outcomes of
the project in an integrative way, as deliverables for
work-packages integrated into project phases and
they realize in a clearer way the relationship
between the products expected by the client, the
WBS and the tasks. This concept of project
management is a valuable lesson-learned during the
course.
6 CONCLUSIONS
The combination of a particular methodology and a
specific software tool (Project.net) has proved useful
on the following topics:
 There is a boost in collaborative terms on the
group dynamics that allows the team member
to put into practice specific competences on the
project management field.
 The students are required to adopt an active
role, as it is them who must solve the problems
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that continuously might appear along the
project development.
 The student is allowed to develop project
management strategies similar to those in a
professional environment, and the rest of the
team members are able to evaluate the
management by means of a continuous
supervision. Specific competences for project
managers are centric as the IPMA model was
selected for designing the methodology.
 The student can work at any distant place and
keep contact with the rest of their team
members.
 Specific management for virtual teams are used
both, for negotiation phase as well as for
tracking the evolution of the agreed subproject,
including mandatory remarks, etc.
The correct use of the collaborative tools is essential
for the success of the experience. The web tool is no
longer an e-learning platform but a natural medium
with which it is possible to learn, communicate, gain
knowledge and share the acquired knowledge in an
effective manner.
In spite of the short length of this course (4.8
European Credit Transfer System or ECTS), its
closeness to professional practice allows to improve
the competence of the students as well as their
empowerment as they produce, usually for the first
time, an answer to a complex engineering problem.
This teaching model is in harmony with the
strategies defined in the Bologna process to develop
the EHEA because it is based on achieving specific
knowledge according to the degrees involved, and
developing the skills required for performance of
professional duties and respond to the work
challenges of a globalised society.
In the end, it was possible to develop this
experience thanks to the selected software-based
support system and its functionality, including the
traceability for all the decisions, actions, documents
and discussions.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This paper has been written in accordance with the
works related to the Spanish Ministerio de
Educación project with reference EA2010-0001.
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