Resumen de Coordination of student teams focused on project management processes
André Luiz Aquere, Diana Mesquita, Rui Lima, Simone B. S. Monteiro, Marcia Zindel
Engineering learning processes are expected to develop technical and transversal competencies on students that are demanded bythe engineering professional bodies. The need for the development of competencies raised an incremental interest in applyinginnovative approaches in Engineering Education. One of the methodologies used in this context is Project-Based Learning (PBL).At the University of Brasilia, a course degree in Production Engineering was created having as a main reference the Project-BasedLearning (PBL) approach. The use of PBL implies a change of behavior of teachers who play a main role of facilitators ofcompetencies development, and of the students, who learn in a collaborative way, working with others in teams. Students’ workingin team and developing a project during a semester will require effective coordination models. The objective of this paper is topropose a model of coordination among students’ teams based on project management knowledge. Furthermore, a qualitativeapproach is applied to evaluate the application of this model during one semester. The results show that a coordination model forstudent teams developing projects is important to support their learning process, which is not solely dependent on students, asteachers/tutors have an important role before, during and at the end of the project. The tutor is especially important, as he/she isresponsible for supporting the teams in several project management dimensions. This is an essential support for students to knowhow to manage the team, communicate, define goals, carry out the activities on time, plan the milestones and understand theimpact of their decisions. These competencies are also part of student learning and are an important part of engineering education.
