Developing and teaching of a world-class online project management curriculum

Stephen A Leybourne,Vijay Kanabar,Roger D.H Warburton

doi:10.5130/pppm.v2i2.2231

Stephen A Leybourne, Vijay Kanabar + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5130/pppm.v2i2.2231

Copy DOI

Abstract

The evolution of the internet and collaboration tools have made it possible to enhance the range of online education, and make it universally accessible and eminently affordable. Around 2000, the faculty at Boston University’s Metropolitan College proposed an online master’s degree in project management, using the emerging learning management systems. The program grew quickly from 40 to 200 students, and was one of the first in the United States to be accredited by the Project Management Institute’s Global Accreditation Committee. This academic model has now been extended to other disciplines and programs.It was expected from the outset that the BU online and classroom academic experiences would be completely equivalent. This presented several challenges, the first of which was developing online equivalents for the face-to-face pedagogical course components. Second, writing online courses, recording videos and developing innovative discussion topics is time-consuming, and we quickly realised that only fulltime faculty had the commitment and motivation to devote the required effort to produce quality courses. Finally, the technological resources associated with course development and course operation required significant investment, beyond the faculty time, currently estimated at around $60,000 per course.We surveyed our students and alumni every two years and now have enough data to describe accurately the evolution in attitudes to online education.As one of the earlier and premier adopters of a rigorous academic online education model, BU has a vested interest to contribute to the growing debate about the academic quality and rigour of online education, the application of high pedagogical standards, and the innovative use of online teaching frameworks and tools. This paper will address and document these issues and assist in raising awareness of emerging “best practice” in the online education domain.

Highlights

It is generally accepted that project management (PM) is emerging from the wilderness of unrecognised and neglected management theory into an area where many practitioners are using project-based activities as the accepted way of implementing organisational and strategic change (Cicmil & Hodgeson 2006)
This desire for managers with PM skills has increased the demand for courses, in both number and scope, that profess to offer a grounding in those skills, and especially for some form of accredited diploma or certificate to document the skills
We have been successful in using some adjuncts as administrators, we have found that we need true academic professionals familiar with PM research to effectively monitor and, especially, develop the curriculum

Summary

Introduction

It is generally accepted that project management (PM) is emerging from the wilderness of unrecognised and neglected management theory into an area where many practitioners are using project-based activities as the accepted way of implementing organisational and strategic change (Cicmil & Hodgeson 2006). Writing online courses, recording videos and developing innovative discussion topics is time-consuming, and we quickly realised that only fulltime faculty had the commitment and motivation to devote the required effort to produce quality courses. There is considerable variation in the mode of delivery of such courses and, in particular, the growth of online delivery has extended the reach of institutions by providing new, different and innovative ways of reaching, communicating with and assessing the student market for PM education.

Results

Conclusion