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Project Management for Dynamic Directed Study

The Climate Crisis will challenge the best minds of this and every subsequent generation as we work to extend our lease on Earth. Problems will be increasingly complex. They will require robust solutions that incorporate ongoing analyses and rapid pivoting in response to new information.

Early training in project management skills will help student teams gather a critical mass of knowledge and elevate the sophistication of their explorations into climate change issues. However, this is an evolutionary process. In the beginning, students will benefit from freedom of choice in their project planning and evaluation of methodologies.

Objective 1: Plan what and how to study

• Choose a project to explore and write a journal entry on what makes it compelling.
• Share journal entries and make connections across the classroom.
• Develop work groups of students around common interests and choose a model for working together. Students may choose to work alone, team up with 2-3 students, or design a larger project team.
• Create an outline of topics and subsidiary explorations needed to ensure adequate perspective on each topic. Be sure to include facts, prior studies and findings, and narratives from the humanities.
• Make a plan with delegation of assignments, due dates, and interim checkpoints for each phase of the project
• Describe how sequential and parallel processes differ and what they mean in a project plan.
• Present the plan as a matrix showing team members, workload, and timelines and reach agreement on the reasonableness and fairness of the plan
• Hold meetings with study partners and faculty advisers to achieve consensus on the plan and how to take the next steps. 

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