‘None of our students will be in the same job at the end of the course,’ says UCD project management course director

The move to a fully online delivery model has proved highly successful for the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School part-time MSc in project management. “The programme has been fully online since September,” says Joe Houghton, director of project management and lecturer at the School. “We ran it on a hybrid format last year as a test. There was a clear preference for online delivery among the student cohort with very few choosing to attend lectures in person. We have seen a significant increase in student numbers for the online programme.”

The attractions are clear. “Busy professionals don’t want to travel to college lectures after a long day at work,” says Houghton. “This mode of delivery facilitates remote learning and enables students based anywhere Ireland or in appropriate time zones overseas to join our programme and build their professional networks. We have a number of overseas students this year including one from Grindavík in Iceland, the town that was hit by the volcano recently.”

Students who wish to experience in-person learning are catered for within the new delivery model. “The two-year part-time programme covers exactly the same material as the one-year full-time course which is delivered here in the Smurfit School,” Houghton explains. “If any of our part-time students want to experience the college environment, they are welcome to drop into the full-time lectures during the day.”

The course is designed for professionals who wish to hone their planning, organisational, control and leadership skills and pursue or continue a high-level project management career. It equips participants with a broad perspective of project and programme management as well as key business and interpersonal skills.

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Houghton emphasises the practical nature of the programme which is academic led and supported by expert practitioners.

“A lot of people think that project management is going to be all statistics and maths and really complicated stuff,” he says. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Project management is the art of getting things done effectively. The MSc in project management is very much a skills-based programme. Students develop skills in project management, as leaders and facilitators, and learn to make change happen.”

Students also get the opportunity to work on real world projects with companies. “Each year, 12 companies come in to present a challenge or market opportunity to the students. Teams of students then work with the companies to develop practical business plans to address those challenges or opportunities.”

The companies which include SMEs, micro enterprises and social enterprises are part of the Dublin City Council led Enfuse programme which matches local enterprises and social enterprises with teams of master’s university students to work together on projects.

It is not just about commercial success. “We have been doing charity projects for the past 16 years and during that time our students have raised about €800,000 for the charities involved,” says Houghton. “They work on projects for charities in second year. They out the skills they have acquired into action for fundraising or awareness raising projects for the charities.”

There is also a strong sustainability and ethical dimension to the programme. Houghton is author of Project Management Made Easy – The Ethical Collaboration Creating Sustainable Results (ECCSR) Approach.

“We did a course review two years ago and introduced a new module on Hot Topics in Project Management which is focused on sustainability and the UN Sustainable Development Goals,” he points out. “Those themes run through the other modules as well. You can’t just take advantage of supply chains and underprivileged peoples.

“People and stakeholders are now very well informed and aware of how a company operates. The programme helps the project managers of the future deliver projects that deliver results ethically and sustainably. A project is a vehicle of change, but you have to do it right, not just effectively and efficiently. You need to have concern for the environment and pay people properly and treat them fairly. Those things are all important in the mix. For many years they were not seen as important in business decision making but they are now. These topics kept coming up in the student work from the last semester.”

The programme is a change and career accelerator, Houghton concludes. “We say to our students at the start of the programme that almost none of them will be in the same job at the end of the course. They will either be promoted or move into a new role with a different organisation. Five of our students have already changed job since September. They are able to take what they learn straight into work and apply it while they are on the course. It raises their game. That’s one of the reasons why the course is so successful.”