My understanding is project practice, is not like teaching.
Could I get teaching experience through a project in building a school or being a PM for a teaching software. Saving Changes...
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten AssociatesNew Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
IMHO, You can only get experience when you are hands on, on the practical side, not the theoretical side.
As long as you are teaching, you will be on the theoretical side. Good Judgement comes by experience and experience comes from bad judgement - A quote that I love. Saving Changes...
Ivo EssenbergSenior Program Manager| IDEXXHoofddorp, Netherlands
I agree, experience is something acquired by using the skills. For example, is a driving instructor a good driver because he spends his day supervising learners? No, his skills come from actually driving, and knowing how to react in certain conditions or situations.
The theory often seems simple, but once you start applying it, you come to realize that it's not always as black and white. Who among us has not tried to sit on a project risk at some point in our career, believing we could fix it and not wanting to get our boss' attention on it yet, only to have that risk explode on us? That is a lesson that no book will teach you, you have to experience it (and deal with the fallout of course) Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
I teached project management because I learn a lot from people. But all the training I performed is 60% practice and 40% theory (sometimes 70-30) and the practices is based on real cases I wrote from real life. I saw some people that perform courses "reading" the PMBOK and explaining the tools and techniques. In my personal opinion it does not add value. At the end is hard to understand the PMBOK if you do no have practical experience. You can have experience using PMBOK tools and practices in your personal life. Saving Changes...
I feel that experience is absolutely essential, PM is a skillset and an art that requires real practical knowledge.
Consider it from the student's point of view too, using Ivo's analogy would you really want to be taught to drive by somebody who cannot drive themselves? Would you not instead look for a teacher that could drive? Saving Changes...
You cannot be a good teacher if you do not have the real life practical experience in project management. Experience and practicing is a must otherwise you have no stories or real application of the theory to show and coach your students. Saving Changes...
You could, of course, get the best of both worlds by considering your teaching initiative a project. The needs assessment, development of learning objectives, instructional design and so on can all be considered the phases of your project.
However, this will provide a very narrow band of PM experience and prior to teaching it, you'd want to get some breadth and depth of projects under your belt first...
Some of the best teachers I've had (in any discipline) always buttressed theory with practical examples. they lay the groundwork for the application of the theory.
so, while one will still be able to teach efficiently without the experience, it would be far more effective to teach after one has experience that can be used to support the theory. Saving Changes...
Real world experience only comes with hands on job. It will be more fruitful to teach and reply to students queries once you have sufficient insight of how things work in real situations. Saving Changes...
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