Which Combinations of Personal Characteristic Types are more Effective in Different Project-Based Learning Courses?

To improve practical IT education, many universities are implementing project-based learning (PBL). Although researchers have examined the relationship between projects and personality, they have not investigated the type of projects and team construction based on personality. We consider not to construct optimal team for the view of educational effectiveness if we do not understand the difference of each course characteristic. Herein the Five Factor & Stress theory is used to measure personal characteristics and classify students enrolled in two different PBL courses at a university into four types -- leadership, management, tugboat, and anchor. Then knowledge and skills questionnaires are used to measure educational effectiveness. The results show that educational effectiveness is highest when a team consists of management and anchor types but not leadership types in the PBL course which teaches system development, and a team without management types is consisted in the PBL course which teaches IT management strategy.