Project Management and Hybrid Teaching at University of Wales, London

This report investigates the University of Wales Trinity Saint David's project to implement a hybrid teaching model, blending online and offline classes to transition students back to full-time face-to-face learning after the Covid-19 pandemic. The report details the project's initiation, outlining a comprehensive project management plan encompassing stakeholder analysis, risk assessment, budgeting, and time management using tools like Gantt charts and work breakdown structures. It emphasizes the importance of communication, particularly email, to keep stakeholders informed. The report also addresses quality management through the application of total quality management principles, aiming to ensure high-quality outcomes and stakeholder satisfaction. The project's success hinges on effective management of resources, risks, and communication to optimize the learning experience and support the university's financial stability. Desklib offers a variety of study tools, including past papers and solved assignments, to aid students in their academic pursuits.

Assessment 1
and 2

INTRODUCTION
Covid19 had left a major impact on every sector on a global basis. Its vast impact can be
seen on the educational sector that had to suffer a lot due to this pandemic. The universities and
schools had stopped the face to face classes to ensure the safety of students as well as staff due to
which they had to face loss of study and universities' financial position also got hindered (Ismail,
2022). The following report will cover the project management of a UK based university i.e.
University of Wales Trinity Saint David , London, that is going to start a project aimed at Hybrid
delivery of teaching including offline as well as online classes with the objective of making the
students come back to full time face to face delivery of class lectures (Zakiyah, 2022). In the
assessment 1, the report will cover the investigation of this project detailing the initiation of new
hybrid delivery of teaching in the university. It will also cover the project management plan for
successful implementation of this project. Further, the report will also explain the key elements
of project management such as communication , stakeholders management, human resource
management , budget for the project etc.
MAIN BODY
Investigate the project
The University of Wales Trinity Saint David is a multi-campus university with campuses
in London, Carmarthen and Swansea. It was established in 2010. It is providing education to
almost 12,700 students including undergraduates and postgraduates. It is affiliated with
University of Wales, Universities UK and Cathedrals Group. It also provides sports facilities to
its students such as Cricket, Football. Hockey etc. The university is comprised of different
academic schools and faculties including the faculty of architecture, computing, Engineering,
business management, Swansea College of Art and Tourism & Hospitality; Faculty of
humanities and performing arts that includes humanities in Lampeter and Film & Media in
Carmarthen. It has also Students' Unions in all its campuses. Regarding admissions of the
students, it puts more emphasis on merit of individual than on UCAS points.
Covid19 has made a major impact on the Education sector globally. Students had to
suffer a lot due to lockdown restrictions that had a negative impact on their studies. In UK,
universities had to close their campuses due to Covid19 to ensure the safety of students as well
as staff. The teaching services were stopped because there were restrictions on provision of
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services in a physical manner. The universities were uncertain about the future as to how to
deliver teaching services to the students. As a protective measure, the schools and colleges
started to provide online classes to their students to keep their study going. Universities had to
face financial challenges due to the disrupted educational services. They had to lower down the
fees criteria for the students (Eaton and Mesmer, 2022). The salary of the staff was also stopped
due to low provision of services. Colleges faced claims from the students regarding their fees and
suffered with loss of income due to low utilisation of hostel accommodation. Universities had to
invest more on providing online classes to their students by more use of information technology.
A wide percentage of the students were shifted to the virtual mode of education but it was not a
successful measure to ensure effective studies as students were not accessible to physical
laboratories for practicals.
The University of Wales and Trinity Saint David also had bad impact due to covid19 on
the studies of its students as well as on its financial performance. To take safety measures
towards its students and staff, it had also shifted to online delivery of teaching in February 2020
when Covid19 was at its peak in UK. But now, observing slow down in the number of Covid19
cases in UK, it wants to engage its students and faculty staff on full time face to face classes. To
ensure this, it has switched to the hybrid delivery of teaching that includes online as well as
offline i.e. face to face delivery of lectures to them. Now, the university is considering
reassessment of the course contribution to optimise the availability of resources and to ensure the
feasibility and viability of delivery options. It is also focusing on stakeholder management and
on improving the library services for its students for the academic year 2022. As of 2022, it has
delivered a notification regarding the removal of social distancing norms, one-way systems and
face coverings in indoor campuses (Shih and Cheng, 2022). It is lifting the restrictions up for the
convenience of its students and staff to make them attend the university physically to continue
their studies and to support its financial position as well.
Construct project management plan
Project management plan is defined as the formal document which defines the way in
which the project will be completed (Butler, Vijayasarathy and Roberts, 2020). It is important to
build a cohesive and comprehensive project management plan because it contributed to timely
and systematic completion of the project. The project management plan in context of hybrid
delivery of education at The University of Wales Trinity Saint David is provided below:
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Stakeholders
Stakeholders in a project are defined as the individuals or parties who have vested interest
in the project. In context of the hybrid delivery of education at The University of Wales Trinity
Saint David, the main stakeholders of the digital suppliers, teaching faculty, students, investors
of the University and government. It is important to understand interest of each stakeholder and
prioritize them so that the project is beneficial for all stakeholders. Stakeholder analysis is
completed below in context of The University of Wales Trinity Saint David:
INTEREST LEVEL
POWER LEVEL
HIGH LOW
HIGH Teaching Faculty Government
LOW Students Digital suppliers
High Interest and High Power: The teaching faculty and investors hold high interest and
high power at the company because they provide the primary services and resources needed for
completing the project of adopting hybrid teaching model at the University. Investors offer the
financial sources needed for purchasing the materials for implementing hybrid model. Teaching
faculty is essential for introducing offline teaching to students. These stakeholders need to be
continuously informed and engage with their feedback to provide them high satisfaction.
High interest and low power: Students do not have the power to influence daily
operational activities at the company but they have interest in the project of adopting hybrid
model at the company. It is important to understand demand of stallholders with high interest but
low power but making sure that the stakeholder does not get bored with the information.
Students will be communicated by using digital channels so that they are updated with the start
of hybrid classes at the company and other factors associated with attending hybrid classes at
The University of Wales Trinity.
Low interest and high power: Government does not have high interest in the hybrid class
project at The University of Wales Trinity as the main focus of the government is to ensure that
COVID-19 safety regulations are implemented during hybrid classes and students gain positive
learning environment. In case of stakeholders with low interest and high power, actions need to
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be taken to provide satisfaction to the stakeholders. This will be done by complying with safety
regulations and following other legislative requirements at the company.
Low Power Low interest: The final element of the stakeholder analysis looks at the
stakeholders who do not have high interest in the project activities and also do not have power to
affect the activities of the project (Tavakolan and Nikoukar, 2019). The digital equipment
suppliers for The University of Wales Trinity do not high-power on the project activities and are
also not interested in the success or failure of the project. In case of the digital equipment
supplier, communication regarding important supplier updates need to be provided s that they
remain updated with the project activities and their requirement.
Risks: Project management involves understanding the risk of the project so that action
can be taken to mitigate major risk factors so that the project provides successful results to each
individual stallholder.
Risk Severity Responsibility Mitigation and contingency action Score (from
1 to 10)
Inability
to attract
students
to hybrid
classes
High Project
manager
The project updates will be shared with
the students regularly. This includes
communicating the benefits of attending
physical classes along with online
educations and the importance of using
the hybrid model. This will reduce the risk
of lack of attendance in physical classes as
student swill be informed about the
importance of adopting the hybrid model
(Gapinski, 2017).
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Technical
problems
in
adopting
the hybrid
model
Medium Resource
manager
This risk will be avoided by evaluating
number of technological equipment
suppliers so that the most suitable supplier
is selected. The technological equipment
will be evaluated on the basis of various
key performance indicators such as lag
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time and consistent internet connectivity.
Lack of
staff
training
to use
hybrid
teaching
system
Low Project
manager
The action take to reduce risk of teaching
faculty being unable to handle hybrid
system effectively is to provide training to
the faculty so that they are able to manage
online as well as offline students when
teaching.
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Budget
Particulars amount
Raw material 2000£
Labours 1000£
furniture 2500£
Consumable goods 1000£
Dishes and Flatwares 100£
Machinery 3000£
Marketing 500£
Salary 1000£
Total 11100
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Time
Timely completion of the project is crucial to successful project management as it helps
provide various stakeholders project deliverables in a timely manner. Timely completion of the
hybrid education project at The University of Wales Trinity Saint David is completed with the
help of project management tools such as Gantt chart and work breakdown structure. Gantt chart
is defined as a tool which helps in visually representing project management activities and
schedule so that they can be easily understood by every member of the project management team
In addition to this another advantage of suing Gantt chart is that it helps complete various
activities so of the project in a timely manner (Malik and et. al., 2019). The work breakdown
structure is another important project management tool which helps divide various tasks of
project into smaller activities so that the project is completed systematically. Another advantage
of using the work breakdown structure is that it makes the project goal seem more attainable by
dividing the large objective into smaller objectives.
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Quality
Total quality management model is based on the assumption that businesses and teams
are able to gain long term success from each member of the company by focusing on quality and
ensuring that high quality results improve satisfaction of the client. In context of the hybrid
education project at the university total quality management principles will be applied in order to
ensure that the project is of high quality. The seven principles of total quality management
which will be applied in case our engagement of people customer focused leadership process
approach improvement evidence based decision making and relationship management (Gu and.
et. al., 2017). The seven principles of total quality management will help supervise that each
element of the project is completed with high quality exceptional results to each stakeholder of
the project.
Communication
 Email : To initiate the above project, the project management team can use the email
communication to communicate regarding the execution of project with its team, faculty
and students as well. Project managers are required to initiate an efficient strategy of
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email communication to ensure better implementation of the project management plan.
They will communicate not only with the project team, but also with the faculty team and
students as well. They need to develop a proper communication plan that includes key
objective of the mails (Jablon-Roberts and McCracken, 2022). For example, in this
project, project managers can use the email communication for informing the faculty and
students about its new hybrid delivery of teaching. It can explain the main aim of face to
face delivery of classes to its project team. Team meeting : Project managers of UWTSD university can conduct team meetings as
well to discuss about the plan and implementation for this project. They can conduct
hallway meetings or formal project status meetings in the university campus. For project
management, face to face meetings is a best method for communication. It ensures
effective decision meeting by the real time involvement of all the managers of different
faculties of university for initiating the project (Szeszulski and et. al., 2022). They can
present the budget requirement in the meetings for the implementation of the project.
They can give and take perspectives of different faculty managers for the project.
Human Resource Management
The completion of this business plan requires technical team to support in implementing
hybrid education system and offer training to teaching faculty. In addition to this, employees
required overlooking the finance and marketing will also be needed for the project.
Benefits realization
The project of hybrid education at the university has various benefits primary being accessibility
for students. Availability of both online as well as offline education will increase accessibility
for students and any building to select the option which is more suited to their current needs. In
addition to this it will also help students who are living outside the university campus to
effectively transition into offline learning through the hybrid model. In addition to this another
benefit of hybrid model is that it can help teachers improve their flexibility by designing offline
and online schedules for different students so that they are able to maintain work life balance. In
context of investors of the university the usage of hybrid model is beneficial as it will help the
company retain students for longer time by giving them flexibility and high quality education.
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Critical analysis of each element of the project management plan
The stakeholder analysis completed in the project management plan provides the advantage of
understanding the interest of mean stakeholders and ensuring that the project is able to deliver
results which satisfy each individual stakeholder with influence in the project. The disadvantage
of this element in the project management plan is that it does not cover other external
stakeholders such as local community and parents associations (Guo, Wang and Liang, 2018).
The advantage of risk analysis and risk register formed in the project management plan is that
different types of risk are covered in this part and mitigation actions which can help reduce the
negative impact of risk are included. the negative impact of this element on the project
management plan is that managing risk is a time taking process and can distract from other
important areas of the project.
The advantage of using gantt chart and work breakdown structure in the project management
plan is that it helps complete the project activities in a systematic manner so that proper time is
given to each activity and high quality results can be attained. the negative impact of this
element is that Gantt chart for complex project can be convoluted and time consuming.
The positive aspect of using total quality management for ensuring high quality of the project is
that it helps cover that quality aspect of the project from different perspectives including
leadership and the client of the project. The disadvantage of using total quality management for
project management is that the usage of this model is expensive and it takes time to show results.
The positive impact of communication channels used for project management is that it includes
both physical and online channel to support effective communication during the project. The
negative impact of using communication channels of email auntie meeting in the project is that
these communication channels do not connect project management team to each other after
working hours (Havermans and. et. al., 2019).
The advantage of constructing a skill team for project management which technological
background is that it can help reduce technical error in the hybrid education project while the
disadvantage is that using technical Support from external sources can be expensive.
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CONCLUSION
From the above discussion, it has been concluded that to mitigate the impact of Covid19
on education, universities should develop strategies to make the students come back to attend the
offline face to face classes. They should conduct a proper investigation for the initiation of the
projects and develop a suitable project management plan to cover all the aspects related to
budget , time and stakeholders associated with the project. As in the above case, the UWTSD
university is going to initiate its project after covid19 to reduce the virtual mode of delivering
education and start the hybrid delivery of teaching that includes both online and offline modes of
teaching, it is developing the project management plan for this project. It is imperative to
conduct a proper investigation for the projects and analyse the crucial elements of project
management such as stakeholders, human resources, communication, budget requirements etc.
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