.. _About Teams:

About Teams
##############

.. tags:: educator, concept

Using teams in your course is an effective way for learners to interact and
collaborate on small group projects or activities. You define the structure of
teams in your course by defining "team-sets", groups of teams based around a specific
topic or assignment. Each learner can belong to one team per team-set, so you can set
up a team-set where learners can join a team to discuss a certain course topic,
or set up a team-set where learners can join a team to work on a group assignment.

You can also configure "instructor-managed" team-sets. This is a setting which allows
course staff much greater control of course teams.  In instructor-managed team-sets,
instructors create and control the membership of all teams. More information on
instructor-managed team-sets and instructions on how to set them up are contained later
in this document. To make controlling course team
memberships across teams and team-sets easier, there is a CSV upload tool that allows
course staff to add and remove learners from teams across team-sets in bulk. More
information on this tool can be found in the section :ref:`Manage Teams Membership via CSV Upload`

When a team is created, it is given an name and description to identify it.
A primary communication language can optionally be specified
and a primary country that members identify with. Team characteristics might
serve as the basis for attracting new members, resulting in small groups of
learners with similar interests and goals who will work together on projects
or activities within the same topic area.

Teams are most effective when learners have a clear reason for joining a team,
and a clear outcome to achieve with fellow team members. For example, you
might create an assignment that consists of a group project or activity,
and ask learners to join teams of their choice within a specific team-set to complete
the assignment. Team members can use discussions within the team to communicate
and collaborate on the assignment. If you want only to  provide a way for learners
to connect socially, consider using discussions within the course rather than teams.
For more information about using discussions, see :ref:`Best Practices for Configuring Course Discussions`.

.. seealso::

 :ref:`Teams Configuration Options` (reference)

 :ref:`Manage Teams` (how-to)

 :ref:`Manage Teams Membership via CSV Upload` (how-to)

 :ref:`Connect Teams to Content Groups` (how-to)

 :ref:`Teams Discussions` (concept)

 :ref:`Learner Experience of Teams` (concept)

**Maintenance chart**

+--------------+-------------------------------+----------------+--------------------------------+
| Review Date  | Working Group Reviewer        |   Release      |Test situation                  |
+--------------+-------------------------------+----------------+--------------------------------+
|              |                               |                |                                |
+--------------+-------------------------------+----------------+--------------------------------+