Teamwork in Aerospace Activity

Glenn Research Center

These pages describe an educational activity which I have presented at several different schools and workshops. There are two main objectives to the activity; one is to expose the students to the operation of the aerospace industry, and the other is a team dynamics exercise. After you've completed the background information, you are ready to get into the activity.

We are going to have the students do something that they are very familiar with; building and flying a paper airplane. You begin by dividing the group of students up into 4 - 10 "companies", depending on the number of students participating. You should have more than 4 people in each company. Depending on your desired results, you can let them group themselves (all boy, all girl teams, etc.) or you can insure that each company is mixed by race, gender, and age. I prefer to have each company seated at its own table on which you place all the required materials except the colored paper.

Since you've talked about the acquisition process, you tell the companies that NASA has just issued an RFP for a paper airplane to be used at the Visitor's Center at NASA Glenn for student outreach activities. Here's the RFP:

The awarding of a contract is going be determined by a fly-off. Each company is to build a single prototype aircraft using the colored paper. (Hand out one sheet of the colored paper to each company). They have 15 minutes to produce the aircraft and they are to meet at some location (front of the class .. hallway .. whatever) in exactly 15 minutes with a pilot, an airplane, and a company "president" for the flyoff. Here's the rules for the fly-off.

Any questions about producing the airplane, the fly-off, or any other matters can only be communicated to you by the president of the company. The students have to relay the question to the president, then the president talks to you. The companies have received "government furnished equipment (GFE)" in the form of paper, scissors, tape, and paper clips in order to refine their design. They are free to test fly their aircraft before the fly-off. But the contract will be awarded solely on the results of the fly-off. Go!

Give the students 15 minutes to make their aircraft. I usually re-enforce the time element and create a little pressure, by calling out "10 minutes, 5 minutes, 1 minute ... 3, 2, 1 done". There will be a lot of chaos going on while they design and test fly their aircraft and that's what the activity is all about. There will usually be one team that can't quite meet the time constraint. If you want to re-enforce an additional lesson, disqualify them from the fly-off.

Conduct the fly-off. Only accept an aircraft made from the colored paper. Time each aircraft from the second it leaves the hand of the pilot until it hits the ground. Have just one plane fly at a time. The sum of two flights gives each company a score. The highest score wins.

Now call all the companies back together for a de-briefing. I have prepared a number of questions to guide the de-briefing, but the key element here is to get the students to talk about the design process and how well the teams worked together.