Date of Award

2016

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Department

Moore School of Business

Sub-Department

Engineering Management

First Advisor

Roger Dougal

Abstract

The world of engineering and engineering practices is advancing rapidly. In response to this rapid change, engineering education practices have to advance to ensure students are properly trained for the workforce. The purpose of this report is to address and substantiate the hypothesis that if engineering instruction incorporated Agile project management methods, then students will be challenged by professors to accomplish course objectives with a systematic and timely approach that will improve assessment performance metrics and present the framework of how agile methods of project management can be integrated into the classroom. The agile methods incorporated will also encourage the use of industry-related soft skills; emphasizing accountability, resourcefulness, team building, and interpersonal skills. From this framework, the idea that instructors have the ability to manage their students and accomplish course objectives in a timely manner, similar to the engineering industry practices, even when presented with impromptu absentees or cancellations, is plausible. The proposed method to substantiate this hypothesis was the implementation of a flipped classroom and using scrumban agile methods within a General and Honors classroom setting. Due to design and time limitations, only the Kanban Board was implemented into the Honors section for study. The results of the study showed the Honors section performance metrics decrease. With the limitations of the experiment, the hypothesis was rendered inconclusive. In moving forward, obstacles that were present (hurricane cancellations and guest instructors) are still believed to be mitigated with full experiment implementation.

Rights

© 2016, Michael Jerrod Myers

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