Team project: a method of teaching project management?

Abstract

The School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at the University of Queensland in Australia has been evolving its approach to teaching project management to engineering students over a period of 10 years. An innovative strategy was implemented where final year students were given the opportunity to manage second and third year project teams, simulating an environment of supervision and management to transfer project management knowledge and skills. This paper discusses how these courses align together, their outcomes, lessons learned, and problems faced. Moreover, it suggests that a team project course can be regarded as a method of measuring quality in undergraduate engineering students thought their degree.