Project Management and Learning Environment: A Case Study

The paper analyses the addition of project management features of an LMS, a topic that LMSs and collaboration platforms have entirely ignored. Many project management-like platforms are available today, especially riding the media wave of agile methodologies. The question is not surprising in itself, as managing time, costs, and resources linked to the discipline of Project Management, is historically a problematic issue for the IT world from a cultural, technical, and organizational point of view. The problem becomes even more complex if applied to the management of learning projects, where we have time, constraints, deadlines, costs, resources like in any other project. LMSs and, in general, collaboration platforms do not include these features, forcing users to link external platforms or adapt existing features (like simple to-do lists) to more complex Project Management tasks. In this work, we will present the tests conducted in a collaborative platform based on the metaphor of virtual learning communities. These tests were on a component developed explicitly for managing projects, activities, and resources, integrated inside the LMS with all the other services (blog, forum, file sharing, calendar, reminders, etc.). The introduction of this new component within the system addresses the need to manage collaborative activities between learners, providing a tool for managing and controlling the progress of the activities assigned to the various community members. . © 2021 KSI Research