The use of computers for graduate education in Project Management. Improving the integration to the industry.

This paper presents an initiative for monitoring the competence acquisition by a team of students with different backgrounds facing the experience of being working by projects and in a project. These students are graduated bachelor engineering are inexperienced in the project management field and they play this course on a time-shared manner along with other activities. The goal of this experience is to increase the competence levels acquired by using an structured web based portfolio tool helping to reinforce how relevant different project management approaches can result for final products and how important it becomes to maintain the integration along the project. Monitoring is carried out by means of have a look on how the work is being done and measuring different technical parameters per participant. The use of this information could make possible to bring additional information to the students involved in terms of their individual competencies and the identification of new opportunities of personal improvement. These capabilities are strongly requested by companies in their daily work as well as they can be very convenient too for students when they try to organize their PhD work

Competence Monitoring in Project Teams by using Web based portfolio management systems

This paper reports a learning experience related to the acquisition of project management competences. Students from three different universities and backgrounds, cooperate in a common project that drives the learning-teaching process. Previous related works on this initiative have already evaluated the goodness of this multidisciplinary, project-based learning approach in the context of a new educative paradigm. Yet the innovative experience has allowed the authors to define a rubric in order to measure specific competences in project management. The study shows the rubric’s main aspects as well as competence acquisition evaluation alternatives, based in the metrics defined. Key indicators and specific reports obtained from data base fields in the web tool will support this work. As a result, new competences can be assessed, such ones like teamwork, problem solving, communication and leadership. Final goal is to provide an overall competence map to the students at the same time they improve their skills

Project Management Learning in a Collaborative Distant Learning Context - An Actual On-going Experience

The goal of this paper is to show the results of an on-going experience on teaching project management to grade students by following a development scheme of management related competencies on an individual basis. In order to achieve that goal, the students are organized in teams that must solve a problem and manage the development of a feasible solution to satisfy the needs of a client. The innovative component advocated in this paper is the formal introduction of negotiating and virtual team management aspects, as different teams from different universities at different locations and comprising students with different backgrounds must collaborate and compete amongst them. The different learning aspects are identified and the improvement levels are reflected in a rubric that has been designed ad hoc for this experience. Finally, the effort frameworks for the student and instructor have been established according to the requirements of the Bologna paradigms. This experience is developed through a software-based support system allowing blended learning for the theoretical and individual?s work aspects, blogs, wikis, etc., as well as project management tools based on WWW that allow the monitoring of not only the expected deliverables and the achievement of the goals but also the progress made on learning as established in the defined rubri

Numerical discrete simulation improving new refractory designs for ultraclean steels

The research on refractory materials has been increased in the last years due to the fact that the metallurgical industry imposes more and more exacting specifications. On the other hand, an interesting way to work with composite materials is the powder technology. This technique consists in producing solid and resistant pieces from powder material. There are two methods to apply this technique: the first method consists in producing the piece by hot pressing and the second method consists in a sintering process after the compaction of the powder. The aim of this work is the generation of a discrete element model that allows to simulate the sintering process of a refractory material. After the model has been adjusted, this is used to look for other mixtures that improve the properties of the sintered pieces. The analyzed process consists in compacting a powder to obtain a green body. After that, the body is subjected to high temperatures to increase the mechanical strength of the piece. Therefore, the compaction and sintering processes are separately studied

Numerical discrete simulation improving new refractory designs for ultraclean steels

The research on refractory materials has been increased in the last years due to the fact that the metallurgical industry imposes more and more exacting specifications. On the other hand, an interesting way to work with composite materials is the powder technology. This technique consists in producing solid and resistant pieces from powder material. There are two methods to apply this technique: the first method consists in producing the piece by hot pressing and the second method consists in a sintering process after the compaction of the powder. The aim of this work is the generation of a discrete element model that allows to simulate the sintering process of a refractory material. After the model has been adjusted, this is used to look for other mixtures that improve the properties of the sintered pieces. The analyzed process consists in compacting a powder to obtain a green body. After that, the body is subjected to high temperatures to increase the mechanical strength of the piece. Therefore, the compaction and sintering processes are separately studied

Educating in Project Management: an innovative approach. A shared-experience among Spanish Universities

This work presents an educational formal initiative aimed to monitor the acquisition and strengthening of competences by students that are being taught in project management subject. Groups of students belonging to three universities, embracing different knowledge areas such as engineering, biology, etc., were selected to run the experience. All of them had nevertheless a common and basic starting point: inexperience in project management field. In this scenario, we propose a new theoretical and practical approach oriented to reinforce problem-solving and related competences in a project management subject context. For this purpose, a Project-Based Learning (PjBL) initiative has been specifically designed and developed. The main idea is to bring a real world engineering project management case into the classroom, where students must face up to a completely new learning approach –groups in different locations, collaborative mode and unspecific solution, supported by a powerful internet platform:.project.net (http://www.Project.net). Other relevant aspects such as project climate, knowledge increasing, have also been monitored during the course. Results show and overall improvement in key competences. The obtained information will be used in two ways: to feed the students back about personal opportunities for improvement in specific competences, and to fine-tune the experience for further initiatives

Adquisición de competencias en dirección de proyectos en un contexto colaborativo descentralizado

Se presenta una experiencia educativa en el ámbito de la adquisición de competencias relacionadas con la dirección de proyectos. Alumnos de tres universidades y tres titulaciones distintas colaboran en la realización de un proyecto conjunto como instrumento conductor del proceso de enseñanzaaprendizaje. El objetivo es valorar la idoneidad de un enfoque multidisciplinar de colaboración a distancia basado en la metodología Project Based Learning en el actual contexto de cambio de paradigma educativo. La experiencia resulta innovadora y es utilizada para definir una rúbrica que permita medir un determinado número de competencias relacionadas con la ingeniería de proyectos y la dirección de proyectos de ingeniería. Un sistema software facilita la integración de las métricas definidas y simplifica los procesos de supervisión de la adquisición de competencias