Abstract:

This presents an experience report on Software Project Management Education in the context of an undergraduate degree program of higher education in computing during the Covid-19 pandemic.

At the end of 2019, there was an outbreak of pneumonia in Chinese territory that quickly spread across the globe. Due to its infectious nature, several face-to-face activities that brought many people together had to be adapted. The social distancing imposed by Covid-19 has immediately reached different layers of society and caused several changes, especially in educational systems.

According to Triyason (2020), such systems were strongly affected; schools and universities had to abruptly interrupt traditional education and switch it to a kind of “remote emergency mode”. In this scenario, educational institutions either canceled their activities or adopted a learning modality entitled Emergency Remote Education (ERE), with educators being released from their institutions and academic activities to work remotely, and students having remote classes at home (Joye et al., 2020). Mostly, all actions were taken with no planning or prior guidance on how to adapt classes and the teaching-learning process. Regarding ERE in Brazil, it is worth highlighting that Computer Science Education takes place mainly in higher education institutions, such as universities. However, different approaches have been adopted by such institutions.

Considering the aforementioned scenario, we adopted an Emergency Remote Education approach to Software Project Management Education. We tailored the planned face-to-face approach to fit our needs aiming to provide a learning opportunity as complete as the face-to-face approach. We present our experience conducting ERE in a Project Management course in the context of a Computer Science degree program. We also present the students’ impressions about ERE in this course and also compare those to the general institute scenario. We gathered responses from 13 students and, in general, the results indicated that learning in the Project Management course varied a lot according to the environment in which the student was and also their study style and habits, in particular. Results can help to shed light on how to improve Computer Science Education, particularly with regard to Software Project Management.

References:
[1] Joye, C., Moreira, M., & Rocha, S. (2020). Distance Education or Emergency Remote Educational Activity: in search of the missing link of school education in times of COVID-19. Research, Society and Development, 9(7). Retrieved from https://rsd.unifei.edu.br/index.php/rsd/article/view/4299
[2] Triyason, T., Tassanaviboon, A., & Kanthamanon, P. (2020). Hybrid Classroom: Designing for the New Normal after COVID-19 Pandemic. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Advances in Information Technology. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1145/3406601.3406635

Keywords:

Software Project Management Education, Emergency Remote Education, Experience Report.