Teaching Teaming Through Spacecraft Design

Project teamwork is essential to the spacecraft design process – in industry as well as in the classroom. At our university, engineering seniors begin the spacecraft design courses having some project teamwork experience, but mostly for short duration projects. We instructors have found that our students don’t necessarily possess the skills required to be productive members of a larger engineering team for an entire semester. To help the students work better in teams during the spacecraft design experience, we have implemented a series of exercises and structures. This paper outlines the tools we have used to enable teaming, the grading strategies we have implemented and the interdisciplinary aspects of our design teams.