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In the choice of a pedagogy for a new unit on IT project management, an innovative single case study approach was chosen, in the hope of providing a ‘virtual environment’ in which students could embed themselves. By providing a single, rich, descriptive project environment for students, it was hoped that they would become deeply involved in the case and thus adopt a deeper approach to learning and subsequently a greater understanding of the theoretical constructs covered in the unit. The pedagogy chosen is being evaluated and where necessary revised in what can be described as an action learning approach. Following an initial evaluation of the learning approaches adopted by students, revisions were made to the pedagogy. This paper discusses the findings from two subsequent offerings of the unit.

Modern IT project managers require a range of multi-disciplinary skill-sets in order to increase the likelihood of project success. Delivery of a single course unit, which attempts to prepare students for the rigours demanded from this role, demands a delicate blend of topics from curricula administrators and a pedagogy that best suits its environmental constraints. The Faculty of Information Technology of one university is using an integrated case method approach in an attempt to link theoretical constructs of IT project management (ITPM) with a real-world, practical implementation example. An analysis of student post-unit feedback indicates a variation in understanding of what had been learnt, providing an opportunity to advance the teaching model.

Although much literature exists on desired qualities of team leaders of IT projects and even desired components of the team, there is a paucity of literature on the desired personal qualities of individuals working within team settings. This research set out to empirically investigate the personal qualities which students believe would be desirable in IT project team members. An initial attempt to create a taxonomy of desired personal qualities was made using feedback from two groups of students; undergraduate and graduate students who had completed an IT project management (ITPM) course. The students were asked, as part of a major group assignment, to give the personal qualities that they would want in project team members if they were a project manager. This topic had not been explicitly covered in their course, though there had been an underlying emphasis on the importance of 'soft skills'.From reading the students' responses, a taxonomy that varied along two main dimensions was developed; first, whether the named quality related specifically to the work environment or whether the quality was one that would be relevant to many aspects of life, and second, whether or not the quality relied on interaction with others and thus whether it was better described as personal or interpersonal. Further, a division was made concerning whether the quality was more a characteristic of a person, called a trait here, or a skill.After the initial taxonomy was developed, it was applied to a different set of students. This new group of students had recently completed a third level, year long, group IT project for external clients. These students, who were from a different university from the first two groups of students, were asked, via email, to give the personal qualities they would want in project team members. From reading the responses, it was apparent that the taxonomy needed to be extended by adding a new dimension, 'values', which would include qualities like honest and hard-working.This new dimension thus allowed a distinction to be made between qualities that reflected a person's values and those that did not, like being cooperative or fun-loving. 'real world' experiences of team work, students may be confronted to an unrealistic degree with poor work ethics of fellow team members, thus leading to a perspective where work values are paramount. Interestingly, while the ITPM course had placed an emphasis on 'soft skills', the undergraduate ITPM students gave less emphasis to interpersonal qualities than graduate students. It may be that the work experience of graduate students has allowed them to see the importance of interpersonal skills. Though initially not concerned with the effects of different methods of educating future IT Project members, our findings give some insight into such educational issues.