Title :
Learning project management skills in senior design courses
Author :
Conrad, James M. ; Sireli, Yesim
Author_Institution :
Coll. of Eng., North Carolina Univ., Charlotte, NC
Abstract :
US university engineering programs include a "senior design" course in their curricula. These courses are a student\´s last opportunity to use design skills learned in school. Student teams work to solve a problem while demonstrating their design and technical skills. A survey of one university department\´s program showed that few student groups complete the full functionality promised at the outset, and many groups did not even complete working systems, only working subsystems. If the students possessed project management skills, they could be more successful. Pedagogy of project management concepts is suggested, based on the Project Management Institute\´s "Project Management Body of Knowledge". An evaluation plan is also suggested for assessing the value of this new framework
Keywords :
educational courses; educational institutions; engineering education; project management; US university engineering programs; project management body of knowledge; project management skills; senior design courses; Cities and towns; Companies; Decision making; Design engineering; Educational institutions; Electric breakdown; Engineering management; Knowledge engineering; Project management; Research and development management; Capstone; project management; scope; senior design; work breakdown structure;
Conference_Titel :
Frontiers in Education, 2005. FIE '05. Proceedings 35th Annual Conference
Conference_Location :
Indianopolis, IN
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-9077-6
DOI :
10.1109/FIE.2005.1612135