Knowledge Management Concepts for Training by Project - An Observation of the Case of Project Management Education

Project management education programmes are often proposed in higher education to give students competences in project planning (Gantt’s chart), project organizing, human and technical resource management, quality control and also social competences (collaboration, communication), emotional ones (empathy, consideration of the other, humour, ethics), and organizational ones (leadership, political vision, and so on). This training is often given according a training-by-project type of learning with case studies. This article presents one course characterized by a pedagogical organization based upon Knowledge Management (KM) concepts: knowledge transfer and construction throughout a learning circle and social interactions. The course is supported by a rich and complex tutor organization. We have observed this course by using another KM method inspired from KADS with various return of experience formalized into cards and charts. Our intention is, according to the model of Argyris and Schön (Smith, 2001), to gain feedback information about local and global processes and about actors’ experience in order to improve the course. This paper describes precisely the course (pedagogical method and tutor activity) and the KM observation method permitting to identify problem to solve. In our case, we observe problem of pedagogical coordination and skills acquisition. We propose to design a metacognitive tool for tutors and students, usable for improving knowledge construction and learning process organisation.