Problem Based Learning and Project Oriented Learning

1
Problem Based Learning andProject Oriented
Learning

• Lesson 3
• Project management and Report design
• Assistant Professor
• Bjørn Langeland

2
Today's lesson

• The project settings and goal
• Managing people
• Co-operation contract
• Project Planning, managing time
• Activity diagram
• Calendar plan
• Project monitoring
• Report design
• Content of a report
• Exercise

3
Project goal and settings
4
Agree on the goal, or you wont reach it!
5
Be aware of your differences
6
Project Management

• Includes
• Management of people
• Management of time

7
Management of people The co-operation
agreement

• Expectations and ambitions ?
• In the project
• In your learning process
• Meetings How often ? What if somebody is late
  ?
• Organizing meetings , chairman, referee, use of
  blackboard ?
• Division of resources?
• What kind of response do you give within the
  group ?
• How do you prepare a meeting with your supervisor
  ?

8
Management of time

• Management of (often unpredictable) changes by
• project planning and
• project monitoring
• Project planning what is it?
• 50 thinking ahead
• 25 communication
• 25 yardstick

9
What does project planning consist of?

• An activity diagram
• A model of the project, including all activities
  tasks, that together constitute the complete
  project
• Both activities to be made and decisions to be
  taken
• Relates activities to each other both logically
  and chronologically
• A calendar plan/time schedule
• Consideration about duration of activities,
  resources (time and people) and parallel
  activities
• How can the project planning be used?
• To experiment with, without actually carrying out
  the activities of the project
• As a yardstick to measure progress of the project
• As a basis for a regular review and update
  process, e.g. planning of the remaining part of
  the project.

10
Activity diagram

• Identify all work which must be made during the
  project
• Analyses, literature studies, experiments,
  writing, editing, etc
• Everything which takes time
• Symbolised by a box
• Identify bottlenecks
• Activities which must be done before other
  activities
• Parallel activities
• Activity A and B must be completed before
  activity C can start
• Decisions
• Evaluations, choices, delimitations
• Symbolised by a rhomb
• Objective statements of progress
• Clear statement on how long you expect to have
  reached
• Use verbs

Activity
11
Activity diagram example
12
Calendar plan

• Identify actual time available for the project
• Time for project work
• Time for courses
• Time of other things
• Identify dates for latest completion of critical
  activities
• End of analysis
• End of solution
• Delivery of report
• Estimate duration of activities
• Allocate resources to activities
• Number of people
• Names
• Make a physical calendar plan
• A rough estimated calendar plan is better than no
  calendar plan!

13
Calendar plan example (1)
14
Calendar plan example (2)
15
Make the calendar plan visible
16
Project monitoring

• Consider an appropriate interval for follow up on
  the plan
• Why has some activities taken too long time?
• How can we compensate for the delay?
• by working harder?
• by re-allocating resources?
• by re-organising the project?
• What are the consequences of each of these
  choices?

17
Deadline is deadline !
18
Exercise

• Optimise our co-operation agreement
• Make an activity diagram for the semester
• Make a rough diagram for the entire semester and
• Make a detailed diagram for the next 6 weeks
• Make a calendar plan based on your activity
  diagram
• Plan how to monitor your time schedule.
• How often?
• Which possible actions could be taken? (what are
  your possibilities for manoeuvring)

19
Project phases

• Initiating problem/motivation of the project
• Problem analysis
• Problem delimitation
• Problem formulation/task formulation
• Problem solving
• Discussion/conclusion
• Implementation
• Verification
• Documentation

20
Project realisation
Realisation/understanding
Implementation
Conclusion
Problem solving
Project initiation
Problem formulation and Problem delimitation
Problem analysis
Time
21
Report design

• Identification and context
• Main chapters
• Introduction
• Problem analysis
• Problem formulation
• Problem delimitation
• Problem solving
• Discussion and conclusion
• References
• Definitions
• Enclosures
• Appendixes
• Management report
• Process report

22
Identification and context

• Front page
• Title, illustration, period, group
• Title page/data sheet
• Title
• Synopsis/abstract
• Name of students
• Name of supervisor(s)
• Period
• Place of study
• Preface
• Target group, context of study, acknowledgements,
  guidelines for the report
• Table of contents
• Chapter headlines
• Paragraphs headlines
• Numbering max 2. levels besides chapter number
• Page numbers

23
Main chapters - introduction

• To give the reader an overview of the report
• Why is the topic of interest? (the initiating
  problem/motivation)
• What is the background on the previous solutions
  (if any)?
• What is the background on potential solutions?
• What will be presented in this report?
• Outlines the report structure
• The introduction must be coherent with the
  conclusion

24
Main chapters problem analysis

• Starting point the initiating problem
• Analysis of the problem
• Documentation of the problem (relevance)
• Origin of the probelm
• Parties involved by the problem
• Analysis of potential solutions

25
Main chapters problem formulation

• The conclusion of the problem analysis
• Objective formulated and well documented problem
  formulation
• Initiating problem vague subjective formulation
• Problem delimitation including argumentation
  for choices
• Specifications for solution
• Choice of theories and methods

26
Main chapters problem solving

• Subdivision of problem
• Sub solutions
• Sub conclusions
• System integration
• E.g.
• Laboratory experiments
• Construction of device
• Analysis of different solution concepts
• Calculations
• More chapters

27
Main chapters discussion and conclusion

• Short resume of methods used and the results
  obtained (describing, objective)
• Evaluation of results (in relation to the problem
  formulation and the specifications set up) did
  we solve the problem (why not).
• Evaluation of theories and methods used
• Perspectives and new ideas has the project
  opened new problems and potentials
• Future work what are the next steps
• Coherent with the introduction

28
How to make references

• The Harvard method (Jensen, 2001a21)
  http//www.library.uq.edu.au/training/citation/har
  vard.html
• By numbers 2
• Literature are listed alphabetic (1) or numbered
  (2). We have to know all possible information's
  to be able to find the quoted source
• Books
• Author(s), year, title, publisher, ISBN or ISSN
  no.
• Journals
• As above name of journal, number and date
• Internet
• As above (if possible) URL and date for
  downloading
• Notice internet documents are dynamic (they may
  change or die)
• Persons
• Name, title, company

29
Enclosures and appendixes

• Appendixes
• Work made by you
• Experimental data
• Calculations
• Result of literature study
• Trivial analysis results
• Software code (CD-Rom)
• Drawings
• Enclosures
• Work made by others (relevant but not your own
  work)
• Datasheets (materials, components, machines, )
• Brochures
• Prices

30
Remember

• The report is not
• a dairy or a laboratory log book
• a novel, where every thing is exposed at the end.
  
• The report
• is the documentation of your project
• must be written (after) the project
• (when you hand in the report everything is known
  on beforehand.
• should summarise everything (that is relevant)
  what the group have found out during the project
• is the only documentation what the examiner have
  of the work you have been doing during the
  semester.
• Also remember to structure the report such that
• a main tread through the report appears
• the different chapters relevance to each other
  (and hence the problem being solved) are clear

31
Exercise

• Optimise our co-operation agreement
• Make an activity diagram for the semester
• Make a rough diagram for the entire semester and
• Make a detailed diagram for the next 6 weeks
• Make a calendar plan based on your activity
  diagram
• Plan how to monitor your time schedule.
• How often?
• Which possible actions could be taken? (what are
  your possibilities for manoeuvring)