International Journal of Knowledge Engineering, Vol. 1, No.

3, December 2015

A Project Management System Based on the PMBOK

Guide for Student-Centered Learning
Chulhyun Kim, Jeonghwan Jeon, and Moon-Soo Kim

situated learning [3] and affords them the opportunity to apply

their skills and knowledge toward the development of a robust
understanding of what it means to be an engineer. This
facilitates an identity shift from student to professional
engineer [4].
However, although the capstone course is very essential in
engineering school and provides students with real
experiences and self-directed learning, the execution of real
or quasi-real project based on team work among students
produces many problems including routine documentary
works, searching information and know-how for
problem-solving, managing team work, relationship with
client firm and others. So they need a project management
system to carry out their project in capstone course as firms
project has been carried out effectively and efficiently using
business-use project management system (PMS). We develop
a web-based project management system based on the project
management body of knowledge (PMBOK) developed by the
PMI of the US to support the operation of capstone course for
student-centered learning in Industry Engineering.
The remainder of this paper is comprised of 3 sections. We
examine the research background in Section II including the
student-centered learning trend of engineering education,
capstone course in IE and about PMBOK. Section III explains
the developed web-based project management system from
basic concept and system architecture to menu structure and
functions. Section IV provides conclusions including
limitations and future researches.

AbstractThis study deals with development of a web-based

project management system based on the project management
body of knowledge (PMBOK) developed by the PMI to support
the operation of capstone course for student-centered learning in
engineering education. The developed web-based project
management system not only enables to encourage
participant-directed learning through managing the team
project execution by students themselves, but provides teaching
staff with operation and monitoring of the whole course. The
PMS is expected to provide effective project performance for
students and efficient curriculum management for teaching
staff.
Index TermsWeb-based project management system,
project management body of knowledge, student-centered
learning, engineering education, capstone course.

I. INTRODUCTION
In most engineering school the capstone design course
based on student-centered learning seeks to prepare
engineering students for work in the industry by challenging
teams to synthesize solutions to open-ended, real-world
problems, typically through the employment of project-based
learning activities based on industrial problems [1], [2].
Usually the capstone course has been applied to senior
students as a gate to achieving their academic degree.
Typically, in one or two semesters of the course, teams define
a problem, plan their approach, propose creative solutions,
analyze the proposed solutions, produce or implement the
solutions, and then communicate them internally and
externally. Participation in capstone design provides students
with the opportunity to transition from student communities
of practice to professional communities of practices, i.e., from
the classroom to real industry. Working with a client-advisor
from the field (industrial engineers, start-up companies,
company representatives, teaching staffs, laboratories, etc) in
a type of apprenticeship, students are challenged with
real-world needs. While students of the capstone course are
not full members in the professional community,
contextualizing the problems, needs, or services within the
field's practices provides students with the opportunity for

II. RESEARCH BACKGROUND

A. Student-Centered Learning and Engineering
Education
Student-centered learning, which refers to the imposition of
more responsibility on students for their own learning than the
traditional lecture-based approach, is an umbrella
encompassing a range of instructional methods, including
inquiry learning, problem-based learning, project-based
learning, case-based teaching, discovery learning, etc. These
methods are all supported by the research findings that
students learn by fitting new information into their existing
cognitive structures, and are unlikely to learn if the new
information has few apparent connections to previous
knowledge and beliefs [5]. As most engineering educational
institutions are in an ongoing process of transformation from
the traditional paradigm, which is discipline-oriented,
lecture-centered, and based on basic and applied technical
knowledge, to a new, interdisciplinary, contextualized,
student-centered paradigm based on a complex understanding
of technological knowledge, the implementation of

Manuscript received April 30, 2015; revised June 30, 2015.

Chulhyun Kim is with the Department of Technology and Systems
Management, Induk University, Seoul, Republic of Korea (e-mail:
stddevs@induk.ac.kr).
Jeonghwan Jeon is with the Department of Industrial and Systems
Engineering/ERI/UNICO, Gyeongsang National University, Republic of
Korea (e-mail: jhjeon@gnu.ac.kr).
Moon-Soo Kim is with the Department of Industrial and Management
Engineering, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Yongin, Republic of
Korea (corresponding author. e-mail: kms@hufs.ac.kr).

doi: 10.18178/ijke.2015.1.3.032

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problem-based learning (PmBL) and project-based learning

(PtBL) have been highlighted more and more by those
institutions [6].
In terms of theory, the understanding of student-centered
learning takes its point of departure in the constructivist
socio-cultural approach of understanding learning and
education [7], building on the widely accepted principle that
students construct their own versions of reality rather than
simply absorbing the versions presented by their teachers.
The methods almost always involve student discussion about
questions and problem solving in class (active learning), with
much of the work inside and outside of class being done by
students working in groups (collaborative or cooperative
learning). Many different variations of student-centered
learning practices may be identified, ranging from the
large-scale implementation of student-centered learning at a
departmental or institutional level, to the small-scale
implementation in a single course [6].
PmBL is a learning process based on a peculiar problem
case under the need-to-know method [8]. For appropriate
application of the PmBL model to engineering education,
PmBL needs a multidisciplinary approach that can provide
information and knowledge, as well as certainty, to
engineering students dealing with problems with which they
are not experienced and that are ill-structured [9]. In addition,
under the PmBL environment, teachers or educators are not a
source of knowledge, but should instead be the guide or coach
facilitating the process of knowledge acquisition for the
students [10], [11]. The PtBL model in the engineering school
is a kind of PmBL, since project work is problem-based by
definition and its process usually deals with problems from
real industry sectors. The PtBL process of ill-structured
problems
requires
the
employment
of various
multi-disciplinary fields to yield solutions to the real
industrial problems [9]-[14]. In identifying how to reach the
project goal, the members of a team have to learn to
co-operate effectively. This creates good conditions for
learning, as it involves both individual and co-operative
activities, as well as interactive discussions and a writing
process (mostly in the form of a project report). Project work
teaches competencies such as project management and
co-operation. Project assignments are also highly challenging.
The more the task reflects reality, the more the students feel
motivated, so working on a project can be seen as a way to
organize various simultaneous and/or integrated learning
processes [15]. Therefore, it is crucial for the students in a
PtBL curriculum to become lifelong learners who have
learned to take responsibility for their own learning process.
This is why the capstone course of senior students is deep
associated with the PtBL process.

faculty members from their private or public contract R&D

projects, projects proposed by the needs within the
engineering school, projects based on subjects of competitive
exhibitions held by outside institutions, etc. Among the
various types, student-owned projects are typical, and have
been encouraged by this course. While execution of the
course during one semester is based on the general procedures
of project management by every project team without lectures,
consisting of 3 regular steps including the proposal, interim
and final evaluation, the preparatory step undertaken by
students before the start of the course is very important for
team formulation, project selection and pre-survey about their
project, etc., and the post step for the application of the
project results obtained is essential for their future carriers.
Thus, the overall capstone course may be comprised of 3
courses: a pre-course, as preparatory study; a class-course, as
a regular course; and post-course, including typical
application activities.
The pre-course of capstone is usually carried out for 4 to 6
weeks during the vacation season prior to the new semester.
At that time, students spontaneously formulate project teams
with a minimum of 3 to a maximum of 5 members. Every team
then receives an industrial problem from a service or
manufacturing company provided by the faculty members,
alumni or the team itself, and prepares to solve the team
project through identification and definition of the team
problem, survey of the target company, which can be a client,
making an execution plan, including assigning detail tasks to
team members, and execution of student-centered learning to
gain the relevant knowledge and information about the
problem and company. Although students meet the faculty
members for discussion and advice about the problem during
the pre-course, all activities and learning for project
formulation are autonomously carried out by students. At the
end of the pre-course, each team prepares a project proposal
and an oral presentation.
The class-course of capstone, which is a 5-credit class with
a teacher in charge and the advisor-to-team, begins with oral
presentations by all teams in the first week, which is an
official event open to the all students of the IE department,
after which the proposals reflecting the faculty members
comments and peer review are submitted in the following
week. Throughout the duration of the course, all teams carry
out their projects through collaborative learning, weekly
meetings with advisors, and communication with their
industrial clients. Although there are no official lectures,
monitoring and control of the progress of all capstone projects
is performed through oral presentations of the intermediate
results, and the mid-term and final-term outputs of each team
are officially evaluated by all faculty members and peer
review as done for the proposal evaluation step. In the case of
industrial projects, the outputs are then delivered to the
related companies, whose feedback must be included in the
final report, which signals the end of the class. The students
grades are determined on the basis of the 3 evaluations, peer
review and/or company feedback, including on the quality of
the project output, as well as the advisors judgment on how
well the team worked together and kept to schedule.
The post-course is for utilizing the project outputs to help
students in their future carriers. It contains areas such as

B. Course Framework and Description of IE Capstone

The industrial engineering capstone course of Hankuk
University of Foreign Studies (HUFS) in Korea lasts 15
weeks, and is mandatory for undergraduate IE students in
their seventh semester. Students are required to work in teams
formulated of 3-5 students in order to develop a real project.
Although the projects are based on real problems, they come
in diverse types: projects formulated by students themselves
from needs of the industrial sector, projects proposed by
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financial support, advice by faculty members, and relevant

information and institutional assistance when submitting the
project output to a university, inside or outside competition
exhibition, submitting papers to academic journals, and patent
application.
From the birth of the IE capstone course to the present, the
overall process has been managed by the traditional teaching
methods in a class. Such off-line management has shown
several pitfalls in both of course management of the teaching
staff and project management of the student teams. The
capstone course-specific features require historical records
linked to previous projects, which would enable students to
search for and define projects without much time
consumption, as well as to obtain effective and efficient
methodologies with which to solve their problems if the
capstone course history were to be available on an on-line
system. Furthermore, the on-line management of the capstone
course can provide teaching staff as well as student teams with
more efficient monitoring and progress control for the
capstone projects. So we believe that a web-based project
management system helps students make an effective an
efficient progress their projects as well as teaching-staff
manage the capstone course efficiently.

project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken; 6)

project human resource management for the process required
to make the most effective use of the people involved with the
project; 7) project communications management for the
process required to ensure timely and appropriate generation,
collection, dissemination, storage and ultimate disposition of
project information; 8) project risk management for the
process concerned with identifying, analyzing, and
responding to project risk; 9) project procurement
management for the process required to acquire goods and
services from outside the performing organization [16].
Since, aforementioned, the PMBOK is a body of
knowledge generally recognized as good practice, the core
contents of knowledge areas, when applying them to the
capstone course, have to be revised considering educational
contextual situation including facilitating student-centered
learning and pedagogical purpose, i.e., to discipline- and
course-specific project management. In section 3, we develop
a web-based project management system of Industrial
Engineering capstone course, which is for discipline- and
course-specific project management based on PMBOK, to
help students themselves execute their projects effectively
and efficiently.

C. Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK)

In order to succeed the capstone project, students are
required an appropriate project management which is also
necessary for teaching staff and regarding participants to
operate the effective and efficient capstone course. The
increasing acceptance of project management indicates that
the application of appropriate knowledge, processes, skills,
tools, and techniques can have a significant impact on project
success. The PMBOK [16], which was developed by the
Project Management Institute (PMI) of the US in 1996 and
published the 4th edition in 2011, identifies that subset of the
project management body of knowledge and generally
recognized as good practice. Generally recognized means
the knowledge and practices described are applicable to most
projects most of the time, and there is consensus about their
value and usefulness. Good practice means there is general
agreement that the application of these skills, tools, and
techniques can enhance the chances of success over a wide
range of projects. Good practice does not mean the
knowledge described should always be applied uniformly to
all projects; the organization and/or project management team
is responsible for determining what is appropriate for any
given project.
The core of project management of PMI is on knowledge
necessary for the processes within project management which
are organized into nine knowledge areas: 1) project
integration management for the process required to ensure
that the various elements of the project are properly
coordinated; 2) project scope management for the process
required to ensure that the project includes all the work
required, and only the work required, to complete the project
successfully; 3) project time management for the process
required to ensure timely completion of the project; 4) project
cost management for the process required to ensure the
project is completed within the approved budge; 5) project
quality management for the process required to ensure the

III. WEB-BASED PMS FOR IE CAPSTONE

A. Basic Concept of Web-Based PMS for IE Capstone
The capstone course-specific features, which are deep
associated with the PtBL process among student-centered
learning models, require historical records linked to previous
projects as well as to obtain effective and efficient
methodologies with which to solve their problems if the
capstone course history were to be available on a web-based
system. Furthermore, the web-based system of the capstone
course can provide teaching staff as well as student teams with
more efficient monitoring and progress control for the
capstone projects. In order to construct the web-based project
management system of the capstone course, the PMBOK
model, the PMIs general project management model, is
adopted and adapted for facilitating student-centered learning
and pedagogical purpose.
The Fig. 1 shows the adapted and revised eight knowledge
areas and contents for the capstone course based on PMBOK.
First of all, the knowledge areas of project cost, risk and
procurement managements were integrated into the student
team supporting management by teaching-staff because such
those managements not only depend on the institution but also
student team needs teaching-staffs sponsorship and control
unlike the private firms project. Furthermore, the project
documentary management is added as a new area that is very
important for student-centered learning process because
students need to search and acquire information and
knowledge for problem-solving by them. It should provide
such those data and information for students as well as storage
and manage information, outputs including documents
created from other knowledge areas and references uploaded
by them from various sources. Thus the adapted knowledge
management from PMBOK is organized into 8 areas. The
main contents of 8 areas are similar to those of PMBOK
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except the last 2 areas which are merged and new area by
capstone course-specific and student-centered learning
feature. Such those differences between project knowledge
management for capstone course and PMBOK make
appearance and function between the web-based PMS for
capstone and business-use PMS based on PMBOK different
apparently.
Contents for
capstone course

PMBOK

Adapted & revised

knowledge areas for
capstone course

Project
Integration

Project
Integration

Project plan, integrated change,

monitoring, evaluation control, outcome
& follow-up management

Project
Scope

Project
Scope

Scope planning, definition, control and

verification

Project
Time

Project
Time

Task definition and sequencing,

duration estimation, scheduling

Project
Quality

Project
Quality

Quality planning, assurance and control

with teaching-staff

Project Human
Resource

Project Human
Resource

Organizing planning and team

development

Project
Communicatio
ns
Project
Cost

Project
Communicatio
ns
Student Team
Supporting
Management
by
Teaching-staff

Communications planning, information

distribution, performance reporting with
teaching staff

Project
Documents

Documents & references storage

planning, search engine, standard form,
output management

Project
Risk

problem-solving information, methods and sources, relevant

references and other information for users. To construct the
system architecture and functions in the 3rd step, we used the
Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard as a web server and JSP,
JAVA, HTML, Java Script, CSS as languages with
Apache-tomcat, Eclipse (Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers)
as development tools and lastly Microsoft SQL Standard
Edition for the DBMS. The last implementation step has to
provide the completeness of the developed system through
test on the accessibility to the system and on whether the data
of output screen is consistent with that of DBMS as well as a
subsequent work such as debugging on the programming,
improving the system by feedback from the test. The last step
was carried out during one semester before launching it to the
capstone course.

Progress control,
project-related cost, risk, procurement
planning & control with teaching-staff

Project
Procurement

Fig. 2. The web-based PMS architecture.

Fig. 1. Knowledge areas and contents based on PMBOK for the capstone
course.

B. Developing Procedure, System Architecture and

Functions
The general 4 procedures to construct the information
system such as analysis, design, development and
implementation are applied to develop the web-based PMS
for the IE capstone course. The analysis as a preparing step
includes the reviews on related references and the basic
concept and necessary contents of PMS discussed in section
3.1. The second step, the design is related to the system
architecture including overall appearance, structure and main
functions. The Fig. 2 shows the system architecture which is
designed by the adapted and revised knowledge areas from
the PMBOK and was also considered the requirements of
capstone course participants: a questionnaire survey for
students and interviews for the teaching staff. The system
architecture was designed for using and providing for the
4-type users which are a professor in charge, the
advisor-to-team, students, external users like client firms and
alumni. The 4-type users can access and use through the
application module of the web-based PMS and produce the
diverse outputs of project execution on the output module
which will be stored and managed in DBMS (data base
management system) module. And service module of the
web-based PMS including search engine and inquiry function
provides the project outputs and history of alumni,

Fig. 3. The structure of main menu of the web-based PMS.

The structure of main menu of the web-based PMS is

shown in Fig. 3 which is comprised of 6 submenus: Search &
inquiry, my page, Monitoring, Evaluation, Bulletin board and
Study note. The functions in such those submenus cover 7
knowledge areas revised and adapted from the PMBOK in Fig.
1. The Search & inquiry menu has several functions searching
the previous capstone project outputs and history, registering
the interested projects to benchmark for the student project
and various projects lists including IE related projects of other
universities. The second menu My page is for each team
including each teams information about advisor, client firm
and personal contents as well as documents produced during
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the project execution. The third menu Monitoring provides

project manager, advisors and a professor in charge with
control and monitoring function such as scheduling control,
correction of current information, approval about tasks,
project-opening and closing, etc. The forth menu Evaluation
provides the proposal, interim and final review results about
team projects by the faculty members and peers including
grade and comments for each report. The fifth menu Bulletin
board is one of communications channel for all participants in
the capstone course while the Study note, unable to access by
other teams and faculty members, is the only channel within
the team that enables members to exchange the informal
opinions of team members and foster a creative idea and
problem-solving methods in an atmosphere of freedom.
And Fig. 4 describes the menu structure of the system
manager which covers knowledge of student team supporting
management in Fig. 1. The PMS supporting manager provides
the management of overall system information, every
participants information, facilities information including
maintenance, repair and operation of department facilities and
hardcopy-typed references, etc. And the most important
function of the PMS supporting manager is not only to
support the project execution on the web-based system
technically, but also to update the project-related information
including project history, evaluation, bulletin data, and
follow-up projects etc.

unexpected system errors during project execution. Such

those problems during using the system decrease the benefits
of project management system and further impede
student-centered learning which is the first objective in the
course. Therefore, besides technical treatment such as repair
and maintenance of the system, the theoretical and empirical
studies on the PMS and the capstone course must be
subsequently essential.
Future studies for theoretical aspect include pedagogical
theories to boost student-centered learning in the capstone
course connecting the academic class to the practical industry
field. And the methods to apply such theories to the system
architecture are also a target of the future studies. For the
empirical studies, as learning by practicing, the usefulness
and validation of web-based PMS for the IE capstone course
can be tested through the survey studies on actual users such
as students, alumni, teaching staff and external firms, etc. The
survey information is also an important source to improve the
current system.
This study aims to develop a web-based project
management system based on the body of knowledge well
known as project management guide and reflected the IE
discipline- and course-specific characteristics. And now the
system is launching and being utilized by the various
participants. Although this is just beginning with many pitfalls,
the system will be expected an important pedagogical
property for student-centered learning and to grow a critical
hub between academia and industry fields for the future
engineers.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was supported by Basic Science Research
Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea
(NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and future
Planning (NRF-2013R1A2A2A03067925)
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Fig. 4. The menu structure of the system manager.

IV. CONCLUSION
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Chulhyun Kim is an assistant professor of
Technology and Systems Management, Induk
University. He received the degrees of BS, MS and
PhD from Seoul National University. Before joining
Induk University, he worked at IBM Korea and Korea
Institute of R&D Human Resource Development and
published papers in several international journals such
as Innovation-Management, Policy and Practice,
Expert Systems with Applications, Service Business, ETRI Journal, etc. His
research interest includes service science, R&D management, and patent
analysis.

190

Jeonghwan Jeon is an assistant professor of the

Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering,
Gyeongsang National University in Korea. He received
his PhD degree in technology management from
industrial engineering at Seoul National University
(SNU), Seoul, Korea. He also received a BS and MS in
mechanical engineering from the Korean Advanced
Institute of Technology and Science (KAIST) in
Daejon, Korea. His main research interests include acquisition &
development, technology planning, technology evaluation, technology
policy, and open innovation.
Moon-Soo Kim is a professor of the Department of
Industrial & Management Engineering, Hankuk
University of Foreign Studies (HUFS) in Korea. He
has experienced as a project manager at ETRI for 5
years prior to joining the university. His research
focuses on technology management and its various
application fields. Dr. Kim has published papers in
several international journals such as Telemactics &
Informatics, Scientometrics, Technology Analysis & Strategic Management,
Omega, ETRI J, Tele. Policy and Technological Forecasting & Social
Change, etc., and also in several domestic journals. He holds a Ph.D. from
Seoul National University in Korea.