Abstract:

Project Management is a research subject that has been studied from different perspectives (task, leadership, system, stakeholder, transaction cost perspective, business by project)[1], and a relevant task during a project is the one related with creativity in the production selection and depuration of ideas[2]. Moreover the information technologies have a great influence on project management[3] [4] and consequently new approaches are necessary to educate the management of ideas during the different phases of a project.

The broad subject of collective intelligence in the field of education has been reported by several authors Pérez_Gallardo (2013), Tsai et al., (2011) , Ilon (2012), and a significant part of research in the last decade refers to the application of information technologies to collective intelligence, particularly in education Alberola et al., (2013), Chen et al., (2012), Malski (2011).

In this paper, we present an exploratory study which proposes a particular type of activities to improve the collaborative skills of learners during the management of ideas in a project. An ICT prototype has been designed and applied to support, inside the class, an approach based on collective intelligence.We used the prototype to supervise the participation of students during the production of ideas and to measure their results and interactions in real-time.

The first part of the paper discusses the concepts and paradigms about the project management education and collective intelligence education. The second and third parts explain the exploratory study that has been done and its results.

The final conclusion is that an approach to creativity education during project management based on a collective intelligence model supported by internet tools has several advantages as well as difficulties that are traduced in a list of recommendations.

Keywords:

Project management, Collaboration, Collective intelligence, Learning, ICT tools, Education.