Game-based Methods for Competence “Teamwork and Leadership” Development: The Case of Engineering Students

The competence “teamwork and leadership” is one of the key and the most required in the modern professional environment. The article presents the experience of the Department of sociology, psychology and social management of Moscow Aviation Institute in the development of teamwork skills among students majoring in engineering. Teamwork in the article is understood as an effective joint activity to achieve goals. Teamwork as a professional competence includes certain skills and abilities that are being formed gradually on the basis of interpersonal and intergroup communication. For the formation of team qualities, gamebased learning methods are used, which increase the effectiveness of pedagogical efforts. Game methods in comparison with traditional lectures and seminars involve more active communication, emotional colouring and visual demonstration of the results. The main task of a teacher is not to broadcast information and check its assimilation, but to stimulate the activity of students themselves. Game-based methods are both a diagnostic and corrective tool, they allow to identify already existing skills, activate the behaviour of students in the desired direction and consolidate the result. The article analyses the experience of using active training methods for the development of the competence “teamwork and leadership”. Trainings are conducted in several stages, on each of them certain tasks are being solved: the current level of competence development is evaluated, tasks are performed together, results are discussed, and an exercise is given to reinforce the skill. After the trainings, change in the participants’ attitude to teamwork and increase in the level of cohesion, trust, and involvement were revealed. The experience of organising of trainings turned out to be successful and useful not only for building competence, but also for identifying difficulties that prevent students from creating effective teams. The materials of the article may be of interest to University teachers working on the development of students’ competence “teamwork” and using learning technologies.