Developing process competencies in co-operation, learning and project management

In this paper, an analysis of the development of the course, "Cooperation, Learning, and Project Management", for first year students in the Department of Engineering and Science at Aalborg University, Denmark will be presented. The objective of this course is to facilitate the students’ learning of process competencies in connection with a PBL approach. The course includes theories and methods within the areas of co-operation, learning and project planning and supports the students' work with a process analysis prepared in connection with their project report. The objective of the process analysis is for the students to develop awareness of the work-and-learning processes, in order to become better project workers. Completion of the process analysis, which involves the student to document his/her reflections of the project process, has been a requirement in the Basic Study Program since 1982. Both the course and the process analysis have undergone major changes throughout time and this development has occurred in three phases: instruction; theory and on-reflection; experiments and portfolio. The quality of the students’ process analysis has improved increasingly with the development of the course. In this paper, we will analyse the development of the course and explain the theoretical ideas embedded in the third phase, in order to discuss the conditions for development. We have reached four conclusive conditions for this development: 1) students already have experiences with project work and group processes; 2) the project supervisors’ support is necessary to create a reflective culture; 3) teachers involved in these courses are qualified in both the subject area and in the learning process competencies and 4) there is a team researching and developing this area. This development of methods cannot only be used in this specific context area, but it can also be used in staff development courses which is actually the case at the Centre for University Teaching and Learning, Aalborg University.