Back to Icy Worlds: Mission Planning
Icy Worlds – U1, Lesson 2: Communication in Complex Projects
In this lesson: Students will develop verbal and written communication skills and interpersonal skills necessary to work as a team to plan a mission to Mars to achieve one or more scientific objectives. In planning the mission, students will have to work with fixed budgets, weight limits, and other constraints that require various trade-offs and give-and-take among team members with different areas of specialization, all of which are needed for the mission to be successful. Students also will explore the kinds of questions NASA is seeking to answer about Mars.
Lesson Level Question: What communication skills and formats are necessary for teams to plan successful, long-term, complex projects?
Engage
Students will explore the importance of clearly written communications.
Explore
Students will explore how a group of people work together as a team and the importance of good communication among team members in order to ensure the team meets its goals.
Explain
Students will develop their communication and presentation skills by explaining how they reached their final spacecraft designs.
Elaborate
Students will apply the ideas from this game to the Icy Worlds mission.
Evaluate
Students will demonstrate their understanding of the importance of internal and external communication in the engineering design process.
Extend (optional)
Option 1: Students will explore a NASA website that shows the hundreds of people involved in creating a single NASA mission.
Option 2: Students will read about the phases of a NASA mission and reflect on which phases seem the most interesting and the most difficult.