Self-Perceived Benefits of Cooperative and Project-Based Learning Strategies in the Acquisition of Project Management Skills

This paper summarizes the results of applying cooperative and project-based learning strategies in two different engineering courses in order to explore their benefits in the students' self-perceptions of project management skills. Nine technical skills and four behavioural ones were evaluated during the academic years 2012-13 and 2013-14 in Civil Engineering, and 2014-15 and 2015-16 in Forest Engineering courses (117 students). The first strategy consisted of the preparation of a project plan to solve a customer's request and the second one was the drafting of a Facebook page to promote one specific commercial project. Results from this study show the strong improvement observed in all the skills studied, these self-rating increases were statistically significant in most of them by the end of the courses. Different tests were applied in order to appropriately assess statistical significance depending on self-rating data distribution. This work confirms the benefit of the application of cooperative and project-based learning strategies on self-perceived improvement in the students' project management skills in engineering courses. These findings are of considerable interest to engineering institutions that want to advance in favour of the students' perceptions of competence and they serve to deepen the combined effects of cooperative and project-based learning in higher education.