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AAEE2017 CONFERENCE
Manly, Sydney, Australia
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1
Experiential Learning in Project Management Education
Louis Taborda
a
, Li Liu, Lynn Crawford
STRUCTURED ABSTRACT
CONTEXT
Project Management (PM) is a relatively new discipline that has experienced significant
growth and acceptance over the last decade. The advance of the PM profession can be
related to the continual evolution of the field from its engineering origins into a generally
applicable management discipline. The increasing adoption and genericity of PM has seen
the Project Management Institute (PMI) predict a significant talent gap with over 15 million
new PM roles projected to be added globally by 2020. The growing demand for project
managers has given rise to significant changes in PM education and the development of
project professionals.
PURPOSE
The research question to be addressed is how the practice-oriented discipline of PM, can
utilise experiential learning in Capstone projects to improve the learning outcomes of
inexperienced PM students.
APPROACH
The role of Universities in the formal education of PMs has increased in recent times,
marking a shift from previously offered technical PM training and professional certification -
usually taken as an adjunct to on-the-job training. The need to educate PM concepts and
tools to inexperienced students represents new challenges to educators. Capstone projects
presents an opportunity to investigate PM students’ perception of the value of experiential
learning in acquiring practical PM competencies.
The contribution to knowledge this paper makes is to explore effective pedagogies
appropriate the education of inexperienced project managers. Mixed methods are applied,
including a student survey supplemented by focus groups, to collect the perceptions of the
PM students about the learnings from their Capstone unit.
RESULTS
The evolving approach to PM education is discussed with the unique challenges of
coordinating a PM Capstone unit that offers an experiential learning opportunity for students.
Preliminary findings from a pilot study of PM Capstone students are presented that indicate
that while student assessment is a significant concern, they felt it developed their
communications and leadership abilities while increasing confidence in their PM capabilities.
CONCLUSIONS
The study indicates the value of PM Capstone units and the key role they can play in the PM
curriculum. Resolution of the unique challenges to experiential learning in PM Capstone units
needs further research to determine and apply the appropriate pedagogies and assessment
methods. This study has wider relevance to the PM profession as it can help set
expectations for University PM programs and the job-readiness of future project managers.
a
Project Management Program, School Civil Engineering, University of Sydney
Corresponding Author Email: louis.taborda@sydney.edu.au
Proceedings, AAEE2017 Conference
Manly, Sydney, Australia 2
KEYWORDS
Experiential Learning, Project Management Education. Capstone Projects
Introduction
Once upon a time, a project manager could only gain that designation after several years of
distinguished experience in their chosen industry. Technical skills like engineering would be
rewarded with a promotion to the role of project manager. Two decades ago, senior
managers rated technical competence as the third highest rated characteristic of an effective
project manager (Zimmerer & Yasin, 1998). While this appears a high ranking, the authors
viewed that as evidence of the waning influence of “technical skills and knowledge of the
industry” as a criterion for project manager selection - the other eight out of nine
characteristics were managerial in nature. They suggested the results reflected “a basic
understanding that effectiveness is directly related to the ability of the project manager to
lead and manage more than simply possess exceptional technical skills.”
The role of PM continues to evolve and growing demand (PMI, 2017a) has resulted in new
educational pathways for aspiring project managers. The introduction of PM undergraduate
degrees, and masters programs for graduates with little or no work experience, is a relatively
recent situation that requires more investigation and pedagogical research. While PM
courses once trained individuals after several years of work experience in which they had to
show proficiency, tertiary education of PMs often reverses that situation.
We now find ourselves in the age of generic PM (Basner, 2008; Crawford & Pollack, 2007)
where students can be trained only in PM skills and practices as encapsulated by the PMI’s
Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). This is happening even as PMI’s own
Talent Triangle (PMI, 2017b) formally recognises that a Project Management Professional
(PMP) requires PM skills in equal measure with leadership and business competencies.
With PMI’s relatively recent establishment of a framework for PM curricula (Kanabar et al.,
2014), many universities now offer PM degrees which enrol undergraduate students straight
after high school. Students choosing to major in PM may graduate without a deep knowledge
of any specific technical or industry domain; effectively making them generic project
managers. Similarly, postgraduate programs enrol recent graduates with degrees in other
disciplines into PM Graduate Diploma or Masters Programs; their limited work and life
experience essentially presenting PM educators with similar challenges as undergraduate
students.
While technical proficiency in a domain may now be viewed as less important to being seen
as an effective PM, we know little about the pedagogies that are appropriate for these new
circumstances. Even where we might understand the competencies required of a successful
PM practitioner (Cartwright & Yinger, 2007; Vukomanović, Young, & Huynink, 2016) the
educator’s challenge is to help create such an individual. The significant increase in demand
for PMs and the resulting interest in the generic discipline as a career choice requires that we
adapt our educational approach to the new situation and ensure that educational institutions
prepare their PM graduates with the requisite skills and competencies to enter the workplace.
Capstone units have been used by PM educators an integrative course at the conclusion of
the PM curriculum for some time (Cesario, 2001). This paper aims to investigate the
perceived effectiveness of this project-based, experiential learning approach to better
understanding its role in the education of a new generation of PMs. Specifically, we aim to
assess the relative value of the experiential learning over traditional lecture-based teaching
in the PM curriculum. To achieve this, we describe an evolving methodology and overview
preliminary results capturing the challenges faced by educators in the design and delivery of
effective capstone units, and the perceptions of PM students undertaking these programs.
Proceedings, AAEE2017 Conference
Manly, Sydney, Australia 3
Methodology
As a relatively new management discipline taught at tertiary level, educators have studied
the application of different approaches to teaching PM knowledge (Shelley, 2015). Our
research objective is to improve the learning outcomes for PM students, specifically those
taking the project-based Capstone units (Schwering, 2015) which provide an opportunity for
experiential learning (Kolb, 1983).
Our research was undertaken in first semester of the 2017 calendar year, with consenting
PM Masters students at the University of Sydney. These students were enrolled in the
Capstone unit in their final semester of the inexperienced PM Masters Program. The
Capstone unit has a duration of 15 weeks inclusive of assessments, and is designed to allow
students to work in small groups to undertake a real-world project. The Capstone project
provides an opportunity for student to consolidate and apply the PM knowledge acquired in
earlier units of study while reflecting on that experience.
Our research design seeks to assess and analyse the student reflections provided as a part
of the Capstone unit, supplemented by focus groups designed to inform the research
question. Ethical approval for this study was received the Human Research Ethics
Committee of the University of Sydney [2017/159] after satisfying concerns about conducting
research with students whose work is also subject to assessment. The conditions stipulated
by the ethics committee has meant that participation has been limited to those students who
provide consent after their student marks have been published and can make themselves
available to participate in the research. These constraints have resulted in refinement of our
methodology with more structured reflections being required of all Capstone students which
serves the dual purpose of better guided student reflections, while collecting their
perceptions of the experiential learning offered by their Capstone project. The student
reflections represent the data which is to be analysed as a part of the research program;
supplemented where possible with focus groups.
This paper describes the first iteration of our research study undertaken at the end of the first
semester of 2017 with PM Masters students who completed the Capstone unit. A description
of the PM Capstone unit and the challenges provides context for the particular circumstances
facing educators. We then present preliminary findings based on qualitative analysis of
student reflections and the results of a focus group comprising five students. While a small
sample, this does provide a pilot for our research approach with the initial content
categorisation offering early insights into the experiences of PM Capstone students. The
results also serve to inform and guide our ongoing research into experiential learning, the
refinement of PM Capstone units and the wider challenges faced by PM educators.
Capstone Challenges
While PM has a growing set of underlying theoretical constructs that have seen it become a
vibrant area of research, it remains a highly practical discipline. Prior to formal degree-level
PM courses being introduced in Universities, PM education was provided by technical
institutes like the Tertiary and Further Education (TAFE) colleges or professional education
bodies.
The PMI has been instrumental in this evolution with the introduction of the PMBOK, and
more recently the formation of the Global Accreditation Centre (GAC) responsible for
accrediting PM related degree programs in universities. While Capstone projects are a
recognised part of the PM curricula (Cesario, 2001; Fan, Thomas, & Anantatmula, 2014),
they do present some unique problems for educators.
Teaching PM generically as a management discipline independent of a specific industry
domain serves to make coordinating PM Capstone units themselves unique. While this is a
consequence of the modern, multi-disciplinary nature of PM, it means that there can be
Proceedings, AAEE2017 Conference
Manly, Sydney, Australia 4
peculiarities in the selection and execution of Capstone projects – which in turn provide PM
educators with challenges in assessing the students.
In a PM Capstone, it is the application of PM methods to the project itself that is a key
learning outcome; rather than delivery of the desired product that is the project’s scope. This
has the benefit of giving greater choice to PM students, allowing them to select projects from
any area, on a range of topics – because the topic itself is a secondary objective to the
application of PM principles to the exercise. One consequence of this is that the tension
between the need to produce plans and status reports for the initiative which can result in the
teams neglecting to provide the promised benefits to project sponsors. While this tension
between planning and doing may also be found in PM professionals, educators must be on
guard that assessment methods do not have the unintended result of making students focus
on the creation of PM artefacts at the expense of delivering on the project scope and goals.
Perhaps one of the biggest challenges faced in the Capstone unit is finding suitable real-
world projects for the students to undertake. While many institutions put the onus on students
to bring their own topics for their Capstone projects, this is not realistic for inexperienced
students who do not have an employer’s workplace from which to source projects. As a
result, some institutions distribute the problem of finding suitable candidate Capstone
projects across the resident academics, with mixed success. From experience, these
projects can be limiting, offering students’ highly specialised topics that advance the research
interests of the sponsors with limited opportunities to apply and exercise the students’ PM
competencies. Given the nature of a PM Capstone project can be about anything (so long as
there is an opportunity for students to plan and execute the scope within the course’s
timeframe) we have looked to source real-world projects from local, not-for-profit (NFP)
organisations including local PM industry bodies, that has the benefit of providing students
the experience of working with external sponsors who expect an outcome from the project.
The fact that a Capstone project’s learning outcomes and assessments are necessarily
biased (60:40 in our units) towards the creation of PM artifacts rather than delivering the
sponsor’s required scope, meant that students acknowledged they looked to select simpler
projects at the start of the Capstone course. Assessing the value the student teams provided
their sponsors is a difficulty faced by markers due to the variability between the projects. This
is compounded by the fact that the sponsor’s feedback can be unreliable and overly
generous as they do not want to negatively affect the students’ marks.
The execution of the Capstone project by a team, or groups of students represents another
contentious and challenging aspect of a Capstone unit. Our PM Capstone program requires
projects to be conducted in groups of 4-6 students who must together work to deliver the
sponsor’s requirements. Special consideration may be given in exceptional situations, but by
default, all PM Capstone projects are conducted in groups. We are aware that not all PM
Programs insist on Capstone projects working in teams and some Universities have policies
on individual assessment that discourage group work due to the difficulty of gauging an
individual student’s contribution. Yet, most projects in the real-world are undertaken by teams
which surely encounter similar difficulties in rating the contribution of individuals to a team’s
overall performance.
If teamwork is challenging to assess, the team formation process also presents a dilemma.
Many units of studies allow the students to form their own teams, where they work with their
friends or develop collegial relationships, and as a result, students prefer to work with these
colleagues for their PM Capstone projects. While allowing students to self-organise and
select their own teams is clearly the path of least resistance for a Capstone coordinator, this
is not generally an option in industry where teams are more likely formed based upon the
availability of resources. As a result, our Capstone program has chosen to form teams based
on a matching algorithm that can assign teams based on selected individual characteristics
so these teams are balanced in some capabilities (e.g. English language skills) yet share
other characteristics in common (e.g. prior grades or degree of commitment).
Proceedings, AAEE2017 Conference
Manly, Sydney, Australia 5
We currently utilise the CATME team formation and peer-evaluation software (Ohland et al.,
2012) in our Capstone units, which provides a means of creating compatible groups and
moderating group assessments based on the teams assessment of each member’s
contribution.
Student Perception of Capstone Projects
Initial content analysis of the Capstone students’ reflective diaries and the one focus group
conducted indicate that the students have some strong views on their Capstone project
experience. The following lists the preliminary findings which indicate the themes that the
authors hope to explore further as more student data is collected:
Challenges of teamwork in Capstones
By far the most frequently raised concern of the students was the formation and
performance of Capstone teams. Complaints of team members not doing their share, not
being capable or simply wanting to do the bare minimum were common. Even as peer-
assessments were used to mitigate the problem of unequal contribution by students
(Rainford, 2014) the students feared that their results were negatively impacted by poorly
performing team members and so the quasi-random team formation method described
above was challenged on several occasions.
Development of communications and soft-skills
Even as students reported frustration working with their team members and sometimes
difficult sponsors, they often concluded that the experience provided them valuable
learnings. While they lamented issues they faced with team members, like similar project-
based learning studies (Jollands, Jolly, & Molyneaux, 2012), the students felt this
challenged them to be better communicators and find ways to motivate and lead their
team. Some other examples of learnings included the routine acts of writing emails to
sponsors and preparing for or recording meeting minutes.
Value of Capstone units relative to other PM units
When asked specifically about the value their felt their experiential Capstone offered over
the other traditionally thought PM units, the common answer was that it provided the
opportunity to practice or acquire new soft-skills. This was balanced by the opportunity
afforded to plan and execute a small-scale project end to end but the value was
moderated by the nature of the specific project the students worked on.
Range of Capstone project candidates
Students felt that there was variability in the Capstone projects that the different teams
worked on and some were too simple or uninteresting. When probed “simple projects”
appeared to be projects that related to organising events or undertaking marketing
activities for PMI or NFP sponsors. They reported that the PM methods “overloaded”
these smaller projects that did not appear to need the full range of PM deliverables that
their assessments required. There was also a dependency on the project sponsor with
students reporting that there was “not a sense of urgency” about some projects. The
suggestion was made that projects from different industries should be offered for those
who wanted to exercise their skills in specific domains.
Job readiness
Without significant work experience of their own, the students found their Capstone
project provided them with evidence of an actual project of undertook that they could
discuss in job interviews. Even as there is debate about the role of universities in making
its students work-ready (Moore & Morton, 2017) this view supports earlier finding that
project-based learning experiences are important for developing communication skills
(Jollands et al., 2012) and the Capstone unit can help students gain practical experience
Proceedings, AAEE2017 Conference
Manly, Sydney, Australia 6
to meet expectations (Hussain & Mohamad, 2015). Students presenting their Capstone
posters to industry professionals at PMI Chapter events found the opportunity to exercise
their communication skills invaluable, pointing to future collaboration opportunities for
educators to work more closely with industry bodies.
Results of undertaking Capstone unit
Asked how the Capstone project changed their perception of their own capabilities, the
focus group participants broadly felt that it improved their personal confidence. What they
had learned in traditionally taught units seemed theoretical with the Capstone providing
them opportunity to apply their PM knowledge and use it to achieve an outcome. Even as
they acknowledged that the one-semester project was only modest in scale, it went
through all the project phases from initiation to delivery. This offered students the
opportunity to practice what they had learned and therefore gain a better understanding
and appreciation of the PM role.
Conclusions and Limitations
The preliminary results reported in this paper indicate that PM students undertaking the one-
semester Master Capstone unit had concerns relating to teamwork and assessments, but
overall found value in the experience which gave them the opportunity to apply and
consolidate their learnings from the more traditionally taught PM units. In addition, students
reported that their Capstone project provided real scenarios and learning that they could use
in job interviews to demonstrate their PM knowledge.
Our research results have the limitation of a small sample size that potentially suffered from
selection bias as participation was voluntary and only the more dedicated and engaged
students attended the focus group. However, our research is ongoing and the richness of the
student feedback provides confidence that the methodology is sound. Even with limited data
principally from a single cohort of Masters students, we believe our findings offer important
pointers to the value of incorporating greater experiential learning opportunities for
inexperienced PM students – potentially beyond just the Capstone units this research was
focused upon.
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