Skip to main content
Missions allows implementing a dual design framework for designing active team learning experiences and for observing, documenting and evaluating transversal competencies. Transversal competencies and teamwork are connected because it is precisely the transversal competencies related to teamwork (both the ability to participate effectively in a team and those competencies that develop as a direct consequence of working in a team) that are usually identified as most strategic in educational programs.

​
What does teamwork mean and imply?

For the purpose of designing a team learning experience focused on developing a project (in the sense of challenge or mission implemented in Missions), we consider 3 types of activities in which team members must engage, some of which require interaction with the rest of the team while others are individual (but connect with team activities). 1. Project design and planning, including:
  • definition of objectives and working methods
  • organization of activities (in time) and resources (human and material)
  • assignment of responsibilities and tasks to people
  • definition of communication and decision-making mechanisms
This activity can happen as a team or individually (when the project leader is responsible for its planning). At the same time, this activity can largely be done before the mission execution (i.e. it is part of the design) or it can, to a greater or lesser extent, be part of the mission itself. In this way, the design can define the degree of flexibility with which the team is expected to face the project. 2. Knowledge production, understood as the codified result (in documents, designs, codes, audiovisual products…) of research, reflection, creation, or proposal elaboration processes. Knowledge production activities, for the purposes of this framework, are decomposed into tasks that happen primarily individually, although some of them may require collective processes (for example ideation). Usually, in project design, phases or activities are conceived that have a collective nature since they include both individual tasks and the processes of integrating the results of individual tasks and pooling and decision-making. For the purpose of mission design, we propose decomposing these activities into a set of individual production stages that happen in parallel where coordination between people is not structured and final stages of dialogue and decision-making that are structured (in time and in the result to deliver). 3. Dialogue, feedback and team decision-making, which involves:
  • dialoguing to debate, explore options, ideate alternatives…
  • peer feedback (on deliverables and on performance) or from the team leader to team members (and vice versa), and
  • decision-making on strategy, selected options, next steps…
These processes can happen synchronously or asynchronously and in some cases can happen face-to-face.

​
About transversal competencies

As mentioned before, teamwork itself actually constitutes the hard core of transversal competencies to develop. On one hand, being able to produce results in team missions is in itself a demonstration that the person is capable of working in a team. On the other hand, teamwork involves communication, generating critical and creative thinking… which constitute the most critical transversal competencies (although they are declared with very diverse terms). Usually, despite the importance given to transversal competencies, they are not usually clearly addressed in the design of learning experiences since they are considered difficult to parameterize, quantify and evaluate and therefore in many cases their assessment remains in the hands of the academic officer who does not have instruments for their observation and evidence generation. As a consequence, evaluation usually includes high degrees of subjectivity. In Missions, a dual strategy is recommended for the effective and robust development and evaluation of transversal competencies:
  1. The active learning process itself (implemented through missions) and, especially, in teams is the most appropriate context for their development and generates ample opportunities for evidence documentation
  2. Deliverables and rubrics must be generated throughout the mission journey that allow producing robust evidence on which to evaluate the level of performance of each declared transversal competency
  3. These deliverables and rubrics are the material on which mentors should base their feedback to learners and their evaluation of the level of performance achieved. It is not recommended to automate that evaluation (although it is feasible), but to provide evidence so that the evaluator’s work is as objective as possible.

​
How are team missions coded?

We take as reference the state of the art of digital teams (oriented to develop digital products and services) since they are the ones that today are at the forefront in agility, flexibility (including the predominance of asynchronous and delocalized processes) and innovation capacity. Teamwork designed and operated with the Missions platform must:
  • Prioritize asynchronous processes
  • Decompose activities into their fundamental components (see above) that are configured as individual stages (of production) and team stages (dialogue, feedback and decision-making).
  • Define a team leader / coordinator role that manages the project and the process (similar to roles such as scrum master, delivery manager…). We do not adopt any specific methodology or school, we allow the designer to decide the coordination approach they prefer.
  • It must be defined if the coordinator is a) a learner who in the mission develops and validates the functions related to the role or b) a mentor (sometimes called teacher or tutor) who coordinates the project, but is not enrolled as a learner.
  • Synchronous activities (online or face-to-face) should be used only when social interaction is really required (in certain dialogues, debates, ideation exercises…). If the period is short, it is sometimes convenient to “force” synchronous activities by establishing a ritual in the stage instructions (e.g. meet weekly)
There is the possibility (not yet implemented) of developing in Missions “synthetic teams” i.e. AI agents that represent roles and collaborate with a real person so they can experience a simulated team experience. With this approach, greater control can be established over team “dynamics” and for example simulate scenarios to develop conflict resolution, communication, leadership or task delegation skills in a controlled environment. These synthetic teams could function in a way similar to training for professional athletes, in the sense that the learner manages to learn behavioral or skill patterns through fictitious (mental) training.

​
Journey adaptations for the design and operation of team missions

  1. The designer tags the mission as a team mission, lists the roles involved (e.g.: PM, Front, Back and UX/UI) and, on the challenge cover, fills in a field defining the role of the team coordinator or leader and their responsibilities.
  2. The team is formed and each member is assigned a role outside of Missions.
  3. At this point, users will already be able to access the mission and see the cover and the initial challenge. For users to be able to start performing the next mission stages, the mentor (teacher / tutor) will have to create the groups and enroll participants in their respective groups with their corresponding role.
  4. Once users are assigned to a team, a specific Discord channel (or a channel or group of another communication platform) should be created so they can stay in contact.
  5. Alternative scenarios for mission launch:
    • Node one, after node zero or initial node, is a bifurcation node. Depending on the role assigned to each of the users, said users will follow one path or another within the mission.
    • Node one is designed as a common node (for example, a first joint activity to get to know each other, which would probably be synchronous) before the previously mentioned bifurcation node.
  6. Within each role’s routes, there will be individual nodes, as they exist now, and team nodes:
    • In team nodes, two or more roles must participate.
    • From the mission design point of view, team nodes will be seen as nodes where the routes of the involved roles join and subsequently separate again thanks to another bifurcation according to the role.
    • During the design phase, it must be decided which user (according to their role) will be in charge of making the delivery of each team node. Once they have uploaded the deliverable and validated the stage, the stage will be validated for everyone and the deliverable will be assigned to everyone.
    • After the completion of a team node, individual nodes can follow in which the different participants offer reflections on the team process and their participation in it and can give feedback to their peers. Simple templates can be implemented to guide reflections such as addressing 4 basic questions: “what went well, what went wrong, what I learned and what I will do differently next time”.