Designing Web-Based Training: How to Teach Anyone Anything Anywhere Anytime

6.9. Team design

The communications capabilities of networks let individuals at separate locations work as a team. Team-design activities use these capabilities so that learners in a class can work as coordinated teams to produce a single design or to solve a single complex problem-no matter where they are.

Ideally, each team must do original research, analysis, and design to complete its part, which yet another team integrates into a common solution. Teams communicate using discussion groups, chat, e-mail, and conferencing tools in order to complete their assigned tasks.

6.9.1. When to use team design

Team design activities are valuable to teach skills that designers apply as part of a team rather than as individuals. Team design activities are also valuable in teaching teamwork skills in their own right. As more and more work requires coordinating with distant colleagues, team design activities will become a more common part of training courses.

Some common team design projects require learners to create:

• A financial plan for a new type of business

• A report on the feasibility of a new product

• Recommendations on the use of a new medical procedure

• Proposed laws to cover new technology

Nothing becomes real till it is experienced—even a proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it.

—John Keats

6.9.2. How team design works

In team design activities, the instructor assigns a design task and helps learners organize themselves into teams. Teams work independently, producing ...