Scientific project management for life science students - course materials

This posting is an open educational resource developed for a Master's course in the life sciences at the University of Tübingen. The full course emphasizes practical project management skills through hands-on workshops, guest lectures, and structured reflection rather than traditional lectures.

The booklet contains the self-study materials used throughout the course. Topics include planning and scoping, time management, communication, quality control, agile methods, and risk management and delegation. Each chapter provides a brief theoretical introduction to key concepts and tools within the topic, followed by a reflection exercise that encourages students to connect these ideas to their own experiences, projects, and future professional practice.

A second PDF accompanies this booklet and provides descriptions of the workshop activities used throughout the course. These workshops were designed to give students the opportunity to experience common project management challenges firsthand, rather than only hearing about them. The collection includes workshop descriptions for Planning & Scoping, Time Management, Quality Control & Monitoring, and Risk Management & Delegation. While several activities were developed specifically for this course, others are adaptations of existing educational concepts that have been modified to fit the learning objectives and context of life science research.

The material is intended for instructors wishing to adopt or adapt all or part of the course, as well as for students interested in developing project management skills in a research context.

To facilitate reuse in different teaching contexts, this version has been adapted from the original materials. Institution- and course-specific information, such as semester dates, timetables, locations, contact details, and guest lecturer names, has been removed or generalized, while preserving the educational content, teaching approach, and overall course structure.