Active learning in project management: the life cycle of a virtual scientific colloquium and its impact on students' performance

The industrial engineering course at the University of Brasilia runs through a project-based learning approach. The course is framed in 12 semesters. In the third semester, a project management discipline prepares students for totally projectbased disciplines starting in the fourth semester. Teaching project management and dealing with the complexity of relations involved in the running project with undergraduates that must solve unstructured problems in a short period is challenging. Is it enough to expose the content in lectures? If we had a normal context without the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, we probably would perform group activities, but it is not possible in pandemic times. After the first half of the discipline, teachers decide to set a virtual project effort to make a virtual colloquium in Project Management. It was a way for students to experience a real project and deal with the diversity of competencies necessary to succeed. The paper presents the discipline structure, the project decisions regarding the endeavor to plan, execute, monitor, and control the Colloquium, and the results regarding student content assessment. Results demonstrate worse grades for the final content evaluation when compared to the first assessment. Despite this, students were satisfied, and the Colloquium was successful with speakers from Brazil and abroad, more than 300 subscribers