Projects to teach university students project management

Question

What is a good project to teach university students project management principles?

I tried one last semester, producing a video, but found it was too simple and the students did not have to work hard enough (and the network diagrams were too simple because there were too few tasks).

The project needs to fit into a semester and should neither be too large or too small. It should not require any extensive technical knowledge (that is, no software development projects).

Edit: Ideally, the project would require only skills that most never-employed 20 year olds would have. The project should ideally not require the students to spend any money (and the school is not going to give them any either).

Edit 2: Ideally, the project would take a group of 4 people 1 to 2 hours per week (per person) for 13-14 weeks.

Has anyone here had experience doing this?

Answer 1

When I signed up for the course "Project Management", honestly, I didn't expect too much. Thing is, I attended similar courses before and most of them were just boring. I mean, theory is nice and good, but you don't believe it until you get some hands on experience. People are like that and it's good, though sometimes annoying for the teachers ;)

Anyways, the "Project Management" (compact) course really changed my way of thinking! Why? Well, it had three major reasons (the second and thrid being more important to me than the first):

1. The lecturer came from a small company and, thus, new what he was talking about. He gave examples for everything he was talking about. I mean, real-world examples, not these boiled down, idealized, artificial things...
2. He used his management techniques to organize the course! He showed us everything in practice by managing 60 students he had never seen before in an agile manner. He let us participate and reacted to our questions
3. He let us prepare different aspects in smaller subgroups. Thereby, he made us use the management techniques ourselves. We did Mini-Scrums (4 iterations in 20 minutes: split the work and assign the tasks, begin the work, finish the work, combine the work to the end result), we used timeboxing to prevent discussions to loose focus, etc.

So, in the end, he showed that what he taught worked in the larger scale (whole lecture) and he made us practice it ourselves (subgroups). In the meanwhile he spiced the theory up with stories about his experiences. The result was one of the best courses I every took.

Answer 2

Why don't you get them to plan out their educational careers? There is a huge amount of potential for them to:

• Articulate a vision of where they want to be in 5-10 years
• Develop a business case to justify spending Mum's $$ on their education
• Identify soft as well as hard benefits and costs
• Identify stakeholders that they need to engage (Mum, profs, future employers, future spouse, etc etc)
• Identify risks and risk management strategies
• Define key deliverables and workflow, along with roles/responsibilities for their realization
• Work out a benefits realization strategy for post-project confirmation that benefits are being accrued
• etc

If nothing else you'll be doing a bunch of 20-somethings a favor by forcing them to think beyond a one-semester time horizon.

Answer 3

The automation for the university admission system can be a sample project. Or the on-campus hiring/placement system can be another project they can work on.

Answer 4

I am currently trying something very different for one of my project management classes that I teach at the University of Missouri. It is a short eight-week class, so there is not a lot of time. However the students are all MBAs, a lot with some work experience. So they are ready to move at a pretty fast pace. This semester the students are developing draft management plans for a project at the simulation center ( part of the med school).

For example, two weeks ago the class studied stakeholder management. In class, we analyze the stakeholders in a case (HMS pinafore) so that the students had some simulated experience. We are using the same case throughout the course; it allows the student to see the project from several different angles, and become very familiar with the one case.

Then last week one team of students developed a list of stakeholders, a communications plan, as well as an influence/authority matrix for the simulation center project. They presented this plan to the class and the simulation center, in order to get feedback and perfect it. They then submitted the plan this past Tuesday. That team is also responsible for updating the plan is additional stakeholders are identified during the rest the course. The group of students were able to identify some stakeholders that might have large influence over the project, that had not been clearly identified previously.

It is not perfect, but I think this approach is giving students a lot more insight into what a project manager has to deal with (even a few difficult stakeholders here and there perhaps). I will know more at the end of the semester and would be happy to share my results/syllabus/resources with anyone.

I would also say, that if you're looking to teach about agile, there are several excellent resources on the web for simulating an agile project using Legos. I've done this in previous semesters and it has been a very valuable experience for students to understand how important planning and understanding customer requirements can be, regardless of the type of methodology that you're using for your project.

Answer 5

I use a designing and building a deck project. It is fairly simple. But simple enough to cover in a 14 week course and complex enough that your WBS, network diagrams and time and cost estimates need some research and thought. I have them watch the videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeDvNXAJ7vY parts 1 through 6. These videos really help them create a WBS and network diagram.