Creation and Sharing of Lessons Learned by Blogging in the Context of Project-Based Learning

Abstract

The knowledge acquired during the execution of projects developed in organizations is captured and published in the form of lessons learned with the objective of being able to apply them in subsequent projects. Effectively reused lessons have an impact on projects, for example, by increasing their quality and reducing their execution time. In an educational context, these lessons can be integrated into project-based learning experiences. Lessons are content generated by students for students, in the same or subsequent courses, who could benefit from reading them. We have applied, for four consecutive academic years, a specific cycle of lessons learned management in a course where project-based learning is carried out using a blog developed with Blogger as a platform for publishing and open access to these lessons. We have analysed student opinions about reading, detecting, and generating lessons as well as the profiles of students most likely to detect and generate lessons. A total of 162 students who developed 154 lessons are included in the study. A statistical analysis is performed to evaluate lessons learned generation. The results indicate that lessons learned generated by peers are useful for learning and have a strong influence on the outcomes of their work. The activity of generating new lessons is difficult and moderately satisfying. Finally, the profile of a student who creates quality lessons corresponds to someone brilliant, whose work is valued both by their teammates and themselves, and who is also attentive to the activities carried out in the course. The implications of this work are that lesson generation is well suited to project-based learning and that students generate an interesting number of quality lessons with the instructor’s support and encouragement.

Keywords

• Blogging
• lessons learned
• peer learning
• project based learning
• student-generated contents