ENHANCING POST-DISASTER RECONSTRUCTION PROJECT MANAGEMENT TRAINING THROUGH SCENARIO-BASED LEARNING

Abstract

Disasters resulting from natural hazards cause physical, social and economic damage. With rise in frequency and severity of such natural hazards each year, post-disaster shelter and settlement reconstruction projects are getting more and more complex. Future project managers who will be managing shelter and settlement reconstruction projects require continuous updating of their skills and knowledge to effectively contribute in disaster resilience. They require project management methodology and education to plan and implement projects that will deliver value to their stakeholders. In 2021, faculty from Technical University of Kaiserslautern in Germany as a Higher Educational Institute (HEI) together with partner institutes quickly integrated disaster related knowledge into its curriculum and offered elective course titled “Reconstruction of Shelter and Settlements after Disasters”. Through active learning strategy like scenario-based learning the course taught Master’s degree students from Civil engineering program about ways to integrate resilience into planning, design, construction process. Students worked through a storyline based on a complex problem of managing projects in post-disaster reconstruction in small groups. This paper describes the process of design of scenario-based learning. Furthermore, through literature review and from empirical evidence obtained from course evaluation survey this paper explores efficiency of scenario-based learning and identifies certain project management skillsets that can be delivered to students who want to work in post-disaster reconstruction projects. The findings show that scenario-based learning can engage students when its contents are well-structured to portray reality and complexity. A practical process for assessing, planning and delivering high value outcomes for post-disaster reconstruction projects immerses students into critical thinking and problem solving.