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Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Uses Cloud-Based Tool To Teach Project Management

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) is giving its students hands-on experience managing group projects with the help of a cloud-based collaborative work platform. The Managing Group Projects (MGMT 331) course offered by SIUE's School of Business uses Smartsheet to help teach its students skills such as defining scope, creating breakdown schedules, and using Gantt charts.

The school chose Smartsheet over more traditional project management software tools, such as Microsoft Project, because it provides the students with "first-hand knowledge of how popular cloud tools can be used to facilitate discussion, collaboration, transparency, and accountability," said Mary Sue Love, associate professor and course coordinator for SIUE School of Business, in a prepared statement.

The Managing Group Projects course is required for all 1,200 business students at the university, but since introducing Smartsheet, the course's popularity has increased with students from other departments. "Because Smartsheet is easy to use and flexible enough to support a wide range of group projects and collaboration initiatives, we're seeing it take hold with our students and also pull in students from other departments," said course instructor, Katie Robberson, in a prepared statement.

Smartsheet is a cloud-based collaborative project work platform that enables users to "organize, plan, and execute a broad spectrum of projects and processes ranging from marketing campaigns to product launches, business operations, sales pipelines, strategic planning, and HR initiatives," according to the company. After completing the course at SIUE, students have continued access to Smartsheet.com until they graduate.

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, located near St. Louis, MO, serves more than 14,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students and employs more than 2,500 full-time faculty and staff.

Further information about Smartsheet is available at smartsheet.com.

About the Author

Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].

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