Exploring Practical Pathways of Data-Intelligence Decision Making Empowering Project-Based Course Construction

DOI: https://doi.org/10.62517/jbdc.202601330

Author(s)

Zhiming Tang

Affiliation(s)

School of Management, Chongqing University of Science and Technology, Chongqing, China

Abstract

Project-based courses have become a common way to develop applied competences in higher education, yet their construction is often decided by experience rather than evidence, and difficulties appear in topic selection, process monitoring, and outcome evaluation. This study explores how data-intelligence decision making can empower the construction of project-based courses and what practical pathways make the empowerment work. Starting from the design principles of project-based learning and the shift from experience-based to evidence-based management, the paper identifies three dilemmas in current practice: project topics that are disconnected from industrial demand data, process monitoring that depends on teacher observation, and evaluation that relies on single-source final products. It then proposes three pathways. Demand-driven topic selection combines graduate employment data, enterprise recruitment records, and student learning profiles to generate project candidates. Process monitoring uses learning analytics to collect milestone, teamwork, and resource-use indicators and to trigger adjustments during the course rather than after it. Multi-dimensional evaluation integrates product quality, process performance, and competence gain, and feeds the results back into the next cycle of course revision. Evidence from published studies supports the direction, including significant gains in collaboration skills in a project-based course taken by thousands of graduate students and improved student outcomes in applied interdisciplinary project programmes. The paper further discusses platform construction, data governance, teacher data literacy, and human-in-the-loop safeguards, and concludes that data-intelligence decision making changes project-based course construction from a one-off design into a continuously revised process.

Keywords

Project-Based Learning; Data-Intelligence Decision Making; Course Construction; Learning Analytics; Higher Education Management

References

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