Social Behavior

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 74 (2013) 233 – 243

26th IPMA World Congress, Crete, Greece, 2012

Strengthening Communication Skills in an Innovative Context of Engineering Project Management Learning

Isabel Ortiz-Marcos*, Colsa Angel Uruburu, Benita José Ramón Cobo, Remón Tomás Prieto

Organizational Engineering and Project Management Department, Technical University of Madrid, José Gutiérrez Abascal 2, 28006 Madrid, Spain

Abstract This document presents an innovative, formal educational initiative that is aimed at enhancing the development of engineering students’ specific competences when studying Project Management (PM) subject. The framework of the experience combines (1) theoretical concepts, (2) the development of a real-case project carried out by multidisciplinary groups of three different universities, (3) the use of software web 2.0 tools and (4) group and individual assignments of students that play different roles (project managers and team members). Under this scenario, the study focuses on monitoring the communication competence in the ever growing PM virtual environment. Factors such as corporal language, technical means, stage, and PM specific vocabulary among others have been considered in order to assess the students’ performance on this issue. As a main contribution, the paper introduces an ad-hoc rubric that, based on previous investigations, has been adapted and tested for the first time to this new and specific context. Additionally, the research conducted has provided some interesting findings that suggest further actions to improve and better define future rubrics, oriented to communication or even other competences. As specific PM subject concerns, it has been detected that students playing the role of Project Managers strengthen their competences more than those ones that play the role of Team Members. It has also been detected that students have more difficulty assimilating...