2012 Volume 35 Issue 1-2 Pages 31-41
The information industry is hoping that universities will provide project management education so that good project managers will become available within a short time. This paper describes project management education given by a university in the form of a role play exercise based on PBL (Project-Based Learning). Providing a role play exercise poses several problems: (1) it requires considerable preparation, (2) it is subject to constraints in time and place, (3) it is difficult to evaluate the effect of the exercise, and (4) there is a shortage of mentors. To solve these problems, the authors have developed an on-line role play exercise system and a software agent that participates in the exercise as a mentor, and have provided role-play exercises for students. This paper presents ways to evaluate both students and exercises based on students' action logs, which record chat messages exchanged by students during exercises, and also assesses the effectiveness of the agent.