Application of MSTAM Methodology in Project Management

Innovation technology development and commercialization are not new, but this is a hot topic in this decade in Hong Kong. The relevant researches are focused on two dimensions from research and development (R&D) technologist perspective (supply-side) and industry user perspective (demand-side). This is a part of the author's engineering doctorate thesis. The thesis title is “An Analysis of the Determinants of Innovation and Technology Fund (ITF) R&D Projects Commercialization in Hong Kong's Logistics and Supply Chain Industries.” A pilot implementation case study has been conducted and tested, and the MSTAM methodology are workable for ITF R&D project deliverables commercialization to the industry.

Deakin Launch Network: an employability network that improves engagement, graduate outcomes and wellbeing by connecting and leveraging the expertise of diverse students and alumni

Graduates require opportunities to gain experience and develop professional networks to enhance their employability and career progression. However, students’ access to relevant networks and opportunities to gain experience is not equitable, and this contributes to gaps in employment outcomes at graduation and beyond (Harvey et al., 2017; Tomaszewski et al., 2019). This paper showcases key principles underpinning the design and success of a student and alumni-led network designed to enhance employability. In addition to creating networks between students and alumni, Deakin Launch Network, leverages their skills and experience to identify and create opportunities to enhance the employability of Deakin graduates, especially for those more likely to face disadvantage in the graduate employment market. In doing so, the network provides students with valuable connections, experience, and knowledge relevant to employability. Students also report that the connections and collaborations supported by the network, contributed to their wellbeing and sense of belonging during remote learning, and satisfaction with their educational experience. For alumni, the network has provided motivation and opportunity to reconnect or remain connected to the university. Our case study shows that students and alumni are a valuable source of networks, experience and influence that can, and should, be better utilised by universities. Furthermore, distributed student-leadership and purposeful inclusion can positively impact the outcomes of student-staff partnerships, including project deliverables, the student experience and learning outcomes.

Model for Project-Based Community Engagement

Community engagement experiences in STEM fields are typically project-based, which introduces components and considerations not explicitly addressed by models commonly used in community-engaged learning more broadly. This paper is a narrative on how we reflected on current models, developed a new one designed for project-based community engagement experiences, and where we see it being useful into the future. While existing models can be useful for STEM-based project teams, project-based engagement raises further questions and presents additional features, such as the existence of the dual value generators of both the project deliverable and project process. We concentrated on providing a macroscopic view of project-based community engagement to organize aspects of a program and maximize positive features while managing resources. The visual model has been developed to facilitate reflection on program design, development, operation, and assessment. It can facilitate intentional consideration, definition, and organization of stakeholders, project deliverables, project process, resources input, and value produced. We foresee several potential uses for this model as a conceptual framework and practical tool for community engagement experiences and programs.

Learning to Collaborate from Diverse Interactions in Project-Based Sustainability Courses

Project-based sustainability courses require and facilitate diverse interactions among students, instructors, stakeholders, and mentors. Most project-based courses take an instrumental approach to these interactions, so that they support the overall project deliverables. However, as courses primarily intend to build students’ key competencies in sustainability, including the competence to collaborate in teams and with stakeholders, there are opportunities to utilize these interactions more directly to build students’ interpersonal competence. This study offers insights from project-based sustainability courses at universities in Germany, the U.S., Switzerland, and Spain to empirically explore such opportunities. We investigate how students develop interpersonal competence by learning from (rather than through) their interactions with peers, instructors, stakeholders, and mentors. The findings can be used by course instructors, curriculum designers, and program administrators to more deliberately use the interactions with peers, instructors, stakeholders, and mentors in project-based sustainability courses for developing students’ competence to successfully collaborate in teams and with stakeholders.

Resilient Scheduling as a Response to Uncertainty in Construction Projects

Complex construction projects are developed in a dynamic environment, where uncertainty conditions have a great potential to affect project deliverables. In an attempt to efficiently deal with the negative impacts of uncertainty, resilient baseline schedules are produced to improve the probability of reaching project goals, such as respecting the due date and reaching the expected profit. Prior to introducing the resilient scheduling procedure, a taxonomy model was built to account for uncertainty sources in construction projects. Thence, a multi-objective optimization model is presented to manage the impact of uncertainty. This approach can be described as a complex trade-off analysis between three important features of a construction project: duration, stability, and profit. The result of the suggested procedure is presented in a form of a resilient baseline schedule, so the ability of a schedule to absorb uncertain perturbations is improved. The proposed optimization problem is illustrated on the example project network, along which the probabilistic simulation method was used to validate the results of the scheduling process in uncertain conditions. The proposed resilient scheduling approach leads to more accurate forecasting, so the project planning calculations are accepted with increased confidence levels.

The Impact of Project Performance on Customer Satisfaction

Project management performance, which means the overall capability of the performing project team to deliver the project to satisfy the customer’s requirements, has always been considered as one major key in achieving customer satisfaction, especially in a business-to-business organizational relationship. In this research, the researchers tried to find out how project performance actually impacts upon customer satisfaction. The project performance consisted of variables project scope management performance, project schedule management performance, project cost management performance, project human resource management performance, project risk management performance, project quality management performance, project communication management performance and project stakeholders management performance. Method. This research used quantitative approach. Data is collected through questionnaire distribution to companies in Jakarta and Bandung. Samples are respondent’s representative of companies, hold managerial position or decision maker. From around 400 distrubuted questionnaire, this researched managed to collect 112 valid response from 112 companies. Data is analyzed its validity and reliability and hypotheses testing employ regression analysis with SPSS software. Findings The research found that, In Indonesia, especially for the private sectors (93% of the respondents came from the private sectors, and only 7% come from public sectors), only four variables, which were project schedule, cost, human resources and risk management performance that significantly affected customer satisfaction. When the researcher interviewed 20 of the respondents most of them were the upper management in their organization, and most of them agreed on these findings. One of the most acknowledged reason for this is because most of the projects in the respondents’ projects were triggered by senior management decisions rather than fulfilling the organizations’ needs or the project deliverables’ users. These users were the ones who actually would use the project deliverables either in the form of products, applications, SOPs or even services. It was a very interesting finding, that many organizations actually conducted projects without actually needing the project’s outcomes. An organization should create a project to support its program, portfolio, vision and mission.

Trans-Disciplinary Pedagogy for Science and Journalism Majors Linking Water Resource Information to Communities

Water Quality Indiana is a learning platform that leverages collaborations, community partnerships, and active mentorship of transdisciplinary student cohorts. Since 2013, this platform has engaged teams of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and communication and media students to investigate water quality in east central Indiana (since expanded to other domestic and international locations) in an experiential problem-based learning environment. For community partners, Water Quality Indiana provides scientific data, analysis, and multimedia deliverables about water quality, and it has a successful record of finding solutions to real-world problems. From the point of view of faculty, project deliverables enhance several aspects of a faculty portfolio. For student participants, the goal is to increase metacognition, civic engagement, and confidence in processes associated with STEM and media studies, and, therefore, the transdisciplinary skills required in an increasingly competitive workforce. Assessing learning artifacts (e.g., assignment, quizzes, or other evaluative metrics) reveals a cognitive dissonance between metacognition and accuracy in declarative knowledge related to topics in water quality—student scores did not increase in posttest data despite an increased confidence in selected answers. In contrast, pretest and posttest results, synthesis reports, and focus group data suggest that confidence in procedural knowledge in both water quality and media production significantly increased by the end of the course. Students cited time constraints imposed by academic calendars and project deadlines as a limitation of the learning environment. Course data reveal differences based on academic background and gender: 1) media studies majors became more confident in their multimedia skills, while STEM majors became less confident; 2) note-taking style and detail is more organized and meticulous for female and STEM students compared to male and media studies counterparts.

Quantitative risk analysis procedure for economic project sustainability.

The paper briefly explains the importance of quantitative procedures of risk analysis in large and medium scale projects for the sustenance of project economic sustainability. Globally, several construction projects are being descoped and tend to close out before attaining the initial project deliverables due to cost and schedule overruns. The quantitative methods can sieve the key factors and forecast the tangible impacts that can lead to schedule or cost variance in a project. It can guide the project stakeholders for timely decision making and mitigate the risks associated to achieve the project goals. Today, the quantitative methods are pivotal to analyze the impacts of Covid-19 crises in Construction industry which are increasingly apparent. Keywords- Project economic sustainability, Risk analysis, Quantitative methods

An Evaluation of Methods to Assess Team Research Consultations

Objective – Due to the individualized nature of consultations and institutional constraints, research consultations can be challenging to assess. At Texas A&M University Libraries, subject librarians use research consultations to teach information literacy to upper-division engineering student teams working on a technical paper project. This paper describes an action research project designed to evaluate which assessment method for consultations with student teams would provide the most actionable data about the instruction and the consultation logistics as well as optimize librarian time. Methods – For three semesters, we simultaneously used up to four consultation assessment methods: one-minute papers, team process interviews, retrospective interviews, and questionnaires. We followed the action research cycle to plan the assessments, implement the assessments, reflect on the data collected and our experiences implementing the assessments, and revise the assessments for the next semester. Each assessment method was distributed to students enrolled in an engineering course at a different point in the technical paper project. The one-minute paper was given immediately after the consultation. The team process interviews occurred after project deliverables. The questionnaire was distributed in-person on the last day of class. Focus groups were planned for after the assignment was completed, but low participation meant that instead of focus groups we conducted retrospective interviews. We used three criteria to compare the assessments: information provided related to the effectiveness of the instruction, information provided about the logistics of the consultation, and suitability as an assessment method in our context. After comparing the results of the assessment methods and reflecting on our experiences implementing the assessments, we modified the consultation and the assessment methods for the next semester. Results – Each assessment method had strengths and weaknesses. The one-minute papers provided the best responses about the effectiveness of the instruction when questions were framed positively, but required the most staff buy-in to distribute. The team process interviews were time intensive, but provided an essential understanding of how students think about and prepare for each progress report. Recruiting for and scheduling the focus groups required more time and effort than the data collected about the instruction and logistics warranted. The questionnaire provided student perspectives about their learning after the assignment had been completed, collected feedback about the logistics of the consultations, was easy to modify each semester, and required minimal librarian time. Conclusion – Utilizing multiple assessment methods at the same time allowed us to determine what would work best in our context. The questionnaire, which allowed us to collect data on the instruction and consultation logistics, was the most suitable assessment method for us. The description of our assessment methods and our findings can assist other libraries with planning and implementing consultation assessment.