First Workshop – The Implications of Rethinking Project Management  for Learning & Teaching 

These are the presented outcomes from the afternoon's group sessions. There is also a downloadable flow diagram (14KB).

Discussion Groups

The following questions were discussed in groups and the group response is captured below, individual responses are captured on another sheet.

Question 1 – What needs rethinking?

Group 1- Rethink and renegotiate the relationship with the professional bodies.

Group 2  - Professionalisation and the role of universities – academic – industry.

Group 3 – Real – complexity, uncertainty, people, enquiry based, links between university and practice

Group 4 – Need to consider different elements (pieces of jigsaw). Tolls and techniques, practice and experience, (sector contextualisation), stakeholder and impact, leadership & management & negotiation. Rethink with levels.

Group 5 – Identify what a project manager really does (craft skills v technical  /hard skills) ie tranferable practitioner skills. THEN identify how to teach craft skills

Group 6 – WISDOM – A university and student owned system to facilitate the understanding and development of wisdom through an ingrained process of contextual appreciation, professional application, and personal reflection in order to allow participants to appreciate what they are doing, why they are doing it and the potential systematic consequences of their actions.

Question 2 – How do we make that happen?

Group 1 – Taking ownership of knowledge, collective power of educators to lead / influence the subject and profession, collaboration and knowledge sharing NOT competition (ie more of these events), being responsive to needs of all stakeholders.

Group 2 – Research & networking. Define & clarify.

Group 3 – Links with industry, role play, enquiry based, management game, boundaries, case studies / VR, 2nd life.

Group 5 – Make greater use of sessional teachers and fund empirical research. Observe PM anthropology and reflect. Develop experiential learning courses. Look at other professional schools (social work, law, architecture, nursing psychotherapy.)

Question 3 – What does it mean for me?

Group 1 – Creating successful students (capabilities etc), creating attractive courses for all stakeholders (but not specifically the accrediting bodies). “Tell us what we could know not what we should know”.

Group 2 – set a better agenda for students.

Group 3 – Move effort. Mutual learning, fun, better understanding & participation of students, better links to industry. Hard to assess and risky.

Group 5 – Help us drop teaching prescriptive and deterministic processes. Make teaching better and easier. Improve programmes. Help me persuade other staff to enmbed craft skills in content courses. Help students deal with complexity.

Photos of flipcharts