The Erasmus+ Italian national Agency has recently funded the PMBoG Project (KA204 collaborative partnership on adult education) that is focused on education and training of project management skills by means of a blended educational format, which includes the development of a thematic board-game.

After the success of the SUSTAIN project (http://www.sustainerasmus.eu/wp/), that accomplished the development of a board-game on the management of urban sustainability (see here for more info), SYDIC is currently involved as partner into another important educational project based on the development of board-games whose rules and playing dynamics follow the System Dynamics modeling and simulation approach.

As mentioned, the project, coordinated by Sapienza University of Rome, aims at teaching skills and competences related to project management through the approach of Edutainment: by using a playful and fun method, the complex nature of project management topic will be addressed, allowing players to manage situations where not only theory is relevant, but also the understanding of the structure underlying the dynamics of projects, for a successful completion. Moreover, this approach also serves as a useful tool to provide players with a common space where they can interact and exchange ideas and knowledge with each other.

The game will refer not only to players with situations where knowledge of project management theory is needed, but also to trained professionals, emphasizing the need to understand underlying structure and dynamics, that are fundamental to rightfully allocate resources in real life working situations and challenges to get the right time, budget and quality performance. At the same time, the project will extend and leverage management competences of educators on an educational and trained level.

In brief, the project goals can be summarized as follows:

• promoting project management literacy among professional, students of higher education and young people in general.

• developing an innovative and student-centered education program, helping experts and non-experts to learn and understand project management basic principles, as well as hidden dynamics.

• designing a (print & play) boardgame and an interactive learning environment based on System Dynamics features, that give learners a more experiential training approach by challenging them to develop their own problem-solving solutions.

• creating a network of organizations that are dedicated to increase public and private awareness and knowledge on project management topic.

To conclude, the final mission of the project will be to join the professional education of next generation project managers with the entertainment aspect, by blending the transfer of well-established concepts, which has proven very effective in many other educational projects. The project consortium involves primary and successful institutions in the world of research, project management professional education and gaming & simulation development.

We at SYDIC are excited to see what will be the impacts that this interesting and innovative project will deliver.