Project Outline for Leeds School of Business Project Resources

Project Outline for Leeds School of Business – Project Resources

Project Purpose

Provide resources (instructions, templates, and examples) of project materials that can be used by students working on student projects as part of their course assignments.

For this project to be worth the effort, students must be aware of these resources and willing to use them on a variety of projects.

History

Many courses have students complete a significant project as part of the course requirements, but do not provide many or any resources to assist students with how to do this.

Project Objectives

In the first year of availability, more than 25 different project teams (in at least four different classes) utilize these resources on their projects,
In the second year, more than 100 different project teams (in at least 10 different classes) utilize these resources on their projects,
The quality of the student projects increases as measured by the average student project grade going from a B- to a B+,
Where projects are done for real clients, the percentage of clients returning (to work with other student teams) increases to 80%,
Project templates must be reviewed by at least 10 different students not part of this project team.

Project Scope

In-Scope:

Leeds School Student Projects,
Identification and customization of resources that will be useful for students to complete these projects,
Sample project templates,
Explanations of how to use these templates,
Organizing these materials on the new Spaces shared website,
Testing these resources with some students to confirm their usefulness and identify areas of improvement,
One iteration of improvements,
Scripts for videos (if this is determined videos would be useful).

Out-of-Scope:

Video production,
Student/faculty awareness campaign,
Training students in the use of these templates,
Training faculty in the use of these templates.

Deliverables

Definition of what a significant student project is,
List of courses/faculty that require students complete a significant project as part of the class,
Examples of project resources available to students from at least three other leading business schools,
Examples of project resources available to students at the Leeds School of Business,
Identify resources Leeds’ students feel would be useful to them to help complete their projects,
Project templates,
Explanations for how to use these templates,
Feedback from students regarding the usefulness of these templates as part of their project work,
Updates to these templates and explanations based on student feedback,
Spaces shared site populated with project resources.

Project Approach

Students will first conduct research to learn how other higher education institutions support their students in the completion of student projects. They will also review materials made available from the Project Management Institute for this purpose and other professional organizations. This will be presented to Jim Marlatt as part of the first milestone.

Students will then conduct research to identify what resources, if any, are already available to students at Leeds School and present this to Jim.

Students will then start to develop project resources and test these on Leeds students for feedback/improvements.

Students will update the Spaces site to make these project resources available to Leeds students in future semesters.

Critical Milestones and Event Dates

TBD by the project team at the beginning of the project.

Roles & Responsibilities

TBD by project team at the beginning of the project.

Quality Considerations

Students must be willing to utilize these resources on a variety of student projects for this project to be considered a success. It is understood that this will not be measurable during the course of this semester, but can be assessed through a testing process for feedback/improvements.

Since different courses have different requirements, these resources must be generic enough to be applicable across the majority of classes/projects conducted by students in these courses.

Assumptions

Leading institutions have resources available for their students who work on student projects as part of their coursework,
These types of resources are not currently available to our students.

University of Colorado – Leeds School of Business

Project Outline Document