4.1 Kick-off meeting and follow-up

We suggest organising the Kick-off Meeting as a mandatory online plenary session with all participants. With 40 people and interactive parts which engaged everyone, this always took 3 hours of work, plus breaks.

During this first session, prioritizing the following processes is essential:

• Getting to know each other
• Introducing the challenges to be addressed in the team projects
• Organizing the teams
• Providing an overview of the Design Thinking method including the time frame. Tip: Share the material (link to course) only after the first session!>

If the learning material for the teams is shared at an early stage, many questions will be posed regarding the material and content of the E-Learning course. However, because the procedure, content details and other information can be acquired through self-study and with the mutual help of the team members, we considered this a team activity to start with. During the kick-off session we focussed more on the central challenge of building the team and preventing tension.

There are also other reasons why it is not advisable to deal with questions regarding the material of the EduBox “Design Thinking” during the kick-off meeting. The course material instructs participants to get to know each other, introduces Design Thinking as an agile method, shows the road map of the exercises, and supports a discussion regarding the overall organization as a team. Everyone should take his or her time to work on this and share with his or her team.

See   PowerPoint "Kick-off"

Note: (Text highlighted in yellow on the slides indicates that this information needs to be updated and customised to your context

After a brief overall introduction, the challenges should be presented. We have provided examples in the slide set but of course you will adapt everything to your context and define your own challenges. The teams came together around the topics and challenges that they chose themselves. However, there were certain criteria that we employed. We always built mixed teams (mixed by location and disciplines), so that at least 2 people in the teams were not familiar with each other. It is also possible to have larger teams, especially since multiple perspectives are helpful. It is important to consider that teams with more than five members may have difficulty finding overlapping time slots to meet and work together. In our kick-off session, we also allowed some time so that teams could briefly meet for the first time to get to know each other in small groups, exchange contact data, communication channels and tools. You will find the process illustrated in the PowerPoint presentation.

The kick-off session slides (provided) cover 3 hours if you also do the interactive parts and exercises. It is also possible to select specific slides from the Design Thinking course, e.g. to introduce the task of developing a prototype and pitch, something that is often unfamiliar to many participants. Or you may want to stress that it is important to build the team before the actual work begins (to this end you could also insert an example slide from the course for this). to the process of developing into a team is clearly described in the course material, and methods are available for it, but experience shows that teams often skip this unit. And it is precisely these teams that risk having a conflict. Because of this we have introduced aspects of conflict management in the Follow-up session together with questions that may arise regarding the organization or the course material.

The Follow-up Meeting to the Kick-off should also be a mandatory plenary session with the whole group, ideally scheduled for one or – at the latest - two weeks later. Meanwhile, the participants can individually review the material and gain a first impression of the task and the content regarding the Design Thinking method. This follow-up session will also take 3 hours of work plus breaks. We developed this second meeting based on our experience that, without it, the importance of team dynamics and team building is not adequately emphasized during the kick-off and by the participants themselves. This is because teams are often so excited to begin tackling the challenges that they frequently lose sight of the actual task of consciously managing a virtual team independently. You can find suggestions and ideas for this unit in the following trainer material. The slides form a sequence that has been successfully implemented multiple times.

See   See PowerPoint "Follow up to Kick-off"

Note: (Text highlighted in yellow on the slides indicates that this information needs to be updated and customised to your context

Very often it is only during the follow up session that teams meet again for the second time. Therefore, it is advisable to ask participants to carry out a task, e.g. collecting questions relating to the material and the procedure during the session. However, the focus of the session should be on the details of how to pitch, as well as typical situations and misunderstandings in virtual teams that commonly have to be dealt with.

We encountered all of the situations mentioned in the trainer manual during our testing phase with different groups. Therefore, we decided to address the issue of conflict and its prevention in greater detail. After presenting a warm-up case in the plenary session and analysing some typical characteristics of conflicts, each team works on a randomly chosen case and discusses how they would address it. They are then asked to develop a slide outlining their strategies, ensuring that they have discussed this topic at least once. Whether you introduce one or two models of conflict depends on the time available. However, the importance of conflict prevention (slide 15) should not be overlooked. After this second virtual plenary meeting, the main self-work phase for the teams begins.