Multidisciplinary Collaboration: an Integrated and Practical Approach to the Teaching of Project Management

Abstract

This paper presents a practical approach to the teaching of applied project management in the form of a collaborative, multidisciplinary project involving the departments of Architecture and Urban Planning (AUP) and Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) at Qatar University. The two courses, Construction and Project Management (ARCT 530 AUP) and Project Engineering (IENG 481 ISE), were running in the same semester, which made it possible to assemble multidisciplinary project teams that included students from both courses, and to share out the management and development roles between them. The primary objective was to simulate a real-world scenario that gave students the opportunity to address the problems arising out from typical situations of professional projects, such as collaboration and leadership within a team, organisation and tasks' allocation, and the ability to manage the time pressure and meet deadlines. This approach brought the theoretical teaching of project management to be closer to its practical application and made it easier for the students to learn the techniques and tools commonly used in the professional setting.