Chapter 4 - Project Management

Summary

IN THIS CHAPTER we

– Learn strategies and requirements for launching a new project.

– Examine a template for a student-generated project blueprint.

– Explore how to regulate ongoing project work.

– Delineate purposeful protocols that can be used to guide student work.

Introduction

The effective management of a project is the most critical, and most difficult aspect of any project-based learning curriculum. Critical to successful project management is a framework for intentional instruction that allows for increased instructional flexibility while maintaining the necessary academic support for students to feel confident in the project process.

Every instructor will need to plan, design, and manage their projects in a way that suits their needs as an instructor while allowing students to exert sufficient agency in the learning process that they readily take ownership of their product. Some instructors may wish to be more restricting in their direction of student work in order to ensure they are honing in on their student learning outcomes. Others may opt instead for a more freeform approach to student projects, using students’ own work as a catalyst to illustrate their student learning outcomes. For example, an instructor might build a cohesive set of student projects by asking every group to select a tale from Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as their focus, with the intent to create their own adapted interpretation of the pilgrims’ tales that demonstrate major social and cultural themes typically encountered in a medieval survey course. Another instructor might simply ask their students to recreate a piece of medieval technology. Such a project is broadly conceived, but it is able to be successfully implemented if managed carefully to ensure students are making progress towards learning outcomes. Ultimately, it is perhaps best for instructors to adapt according to the needs of their audience and constituents. Augustine and Aquinas both suggest that secular custom and law might be changed at various points to be more or less restrictive depending upon the needs of the people. Perhaps this is also true with undergraduate students.

Project Implementation

The project implementation process is complex, especially for students or instructors new to the process.