Project Summary

Title: Project Management Plan (PMP) for Chemistry Education Face-to-Face to Online

 

Context: A final project for course IDE 761: Strategies in Educational Projecct Management

 

Author(s): Michal Downie, Dominick Fantacone, Amber A. Walton

 

IDD&E Component: Management (22) Plan and manage instructional design projects.

 

Reflection/Self-Assessment:

Overview

This online course's final course project was completed with teams of three students who were assigned by the instructor.  The project topic was chosen from a bank of five potential topics in varying contexts; our team members had chosen a higher education (university) setting, so we were assigned our group based on our interest in that context.  The final project deliverables were a 20-page written Project Management Plan (PMP) and a 10-minute video of a narrated PowerPoint presentation.  The focus of the project was on the 5-Phase project management method: 1) define, 2) plan, 3) organize, 4) control, and 5) close.  Team members were required to reflect on the collaboration between teammates, including how equally the work was shared.

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Strengths

A great deal of group collaboration was necessary to draft a thorough PMP.  Scheduled group meetings with the professor featured two realistic, large-scale changes to the project, as determined by our 'imaginary client,' portrayed by the professor.  These mandated changes provided challenges for our team, but because we had built in extra time and resources into our initial plan, we were able to navigate the two big changes without much stress or hardship.  Other strengths of the project included a very detailed task breakdown and corresponding Gantt chart (which I created in MS Excel without the aid of any project management software or Gantt chart creator), 

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Opportunities

Our team felt challenged by some of the required tasks, such as calculating the amount of time required for each project task and the amount of money each task would cost.  There might not be a good way to better understand these calculations without experiencing a real-world application, for instance, being hired to participate as a project manager in an actual educational or business setting.  It was also somewhat challenging for our group to communicate and share the project workload in an online setting, particularly for two team members who also hold full time jobs on top of their course work.  The most productive work meetings occurred during the one time in which we met face-to-face.