Assessment Brief –
M503 Behavioral Competencies in Virtual
Teams
Winter Semester, Quarter 2,2024
Part I: General Information
Module
Primary Assignment Title
Weighting
M503 Behavioral Competences in Virtual Teams
Individual Written Essay
70% Primary Assessment Task
15% class participation
15% online assessments
Distributed on:
To be submitted on:
Submission Method
W/C 15th January,2024
12th April,2024, 18:00 CET
The essay must be submitted electronically via the virtual learning system
or by email.
You must submit your work accompanied by an Assessed Submission Form,
which must be completed in full. The assignment will not be accepted by
the Registry unless the form is completed correctly.
Length
The submitted essay should have 2,500 words with +/- 5%
Part II: Assessment Details
Assessment Topic
You are tasked with building a new team. You will find all relevant
information about this task in the addendum that forms an integral part of
this assessment brief.
You will have to submit a written report.
Assessment Guidelines
All points for you to cover are included in the addendum. If you feel points
are missing or you would like to cover additional aspects worth mentioning
in the context of the assessment, please be welcome.
Purpose
Successfully managing virtual teams requires managers to understand what
some of the challenges might be and having a good command of tools for
managing people who they may only see or hear through digital media. Also,
success depends on team composition and planification of communication,
rules of conduct, and clear boundaries. These elements of successful virtual
teams can and should be planned before works of the virtual team
commences.
Links to module
intended learning
outcomes
The assignment relates to the following intended learning outcomes for the
module:
•
•
Understand different team roles in volatile and complex
virtual contexts
Reflect on practical experience in virtual teams.
•
•
•
Special Instructions
Assess their own strengths and weaknesses in a team
context as well as their individual development needs
Explain and synthesize the principles of collaboration in
virtual teams themselves
Construct the factors leading to the emergence of a leader
in a virtual team in different stages of virtual team
development
Make sure you don’t miss the right entry point into the assessment. This is
about you as the benchmark so to speak, in building a virtual team. I want to
see how you approach the task. So don’t write “how managers should do
this,” I want to see you planning the task. One of the key theories in this
module is that each of us has leadership and design competencies and
therefore each of us is suited to be a manager – if, and this is the crux, we
know our competencies and select team members based on their
complementary competencies to ours. Selecting team members based on
similarity, that’s not what counts in team building.
Also, remember to never submit files in generic formats such as Word or
Powerpoint. Always submit PDFs that can be checked for plagiarism through
Turnitin
The use of generative AI technologies (such as ChatGPT) in your final
assignments is not allowed unless the assessment guidelines explicitly clarify,
under which terms, you are allowed to use these technologies. Any violation
of this rule will result in an investigation of academic misconduct.
Additional Assessment
Components
GISMA University rewards in class participation, and engagement with
asynchronous content, at a rate of 30% per module.
Students participating ? 80% (factoring on possible extenuating
circumstances) of their synchronous classes as per their due mode of
delivery, will gain 15% towards their final module mark.
Students successfully engaging with asynchronous material on the
gamification/microlearning path and completing all summative assessments
in the asynchronous environment, will equally gain 15% towards their final
module mark.
The above also entail that, students falling below 80% of participation,
although they will be still allowed to submit, they will have their final mark
capped at 85/100. Equally, if they fail to engage with the asynchronous
material and complete the short summative assessments included in specific
checkpoints during each term (usually 4), their module mark, irrespective of
their engagement and participation in synchronous delivery, will drop by a
maximum rate of 15%.
Part III: Marking Criteria / Assessment Criteria
Mark
Weight
Fail
(0 – 49%)
Sufficient
(50 – 59%)
Satisfactory
(60 – 74%)
Good
(75-89%)
Very Good
(90-100%)
100%
5,0
4,0 – 3,7
2,7-3,3
1,7-2,3
1,0-1,3
Marking
Criteria
Does not fulfil
the requirements
of
the
assessment.
Demonstrates
acceptable
knowledge
and
understanding of the
subject-matter and
achievement
of
learning
outcomes at low to
average
level of performance.
Demonstrates
substantial knowledge
and understanding of
the subject-matter and
achievement
of
learning
outcomes at average
to
above
average performance
levels.
Demonstrates
a
comprehensive
knowledge
and
understanding of the
subject-matter
and
achievement
of
learning
outcomes at well
above average levels
of performance.
Demonstrates
a
comprehensive
knowledge
and
understanding of the
subject-matter
and achievement of
learning
outcomes at
high (highest) levels
of performance.
Primary Assessment
Task Criteria
Notes
Marking
Your written essay will be assessed based on the following criteria:
• The conclusiveness of your train of thought. (20%)
• Your command of tools that help you set-up the virtual team. (20%)
• Your understanding of what challenges you may encounter with your
virtual team and how you will handle them.(20%)
• Professional Formatting and Harvard Referencing. (10%)
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Part IV: Tips for Successfully Engaging with this Assessment
Answer the Question
How to use Assessment
Criteria
It may seem obvious, but make sure you are answering the question you have
been set, not the question you would prefer to answer. If the brief has a
number of tasks or parts, answer all of them. Parts that involve evaluation or
analysis are usually longer and worth more marks than parts that ask for
description or explanation. Keep the brief in front of you and check it
regularly.
The assessment criteria document is not usually a guide to the structure of
your assignment. Each section of the criteria is not a separate paragraph in
your assignment, but qualities that you need to demonstrate throughout.
Treat the assessment criteria as a checklist at the end not as a plan at the
beginning. Also, the criteria document often tells you what to demonstrate
(e.g., critical analysis) but not necessarily how to do it. For how to do it, look
back at the skills and activities you have covered in the rest of the module.
Above all, remember this is not a test of how much you know or how much
you have read about the topic. It is a test of how well you can use your
knowledge to answer the specific question set.
Planning and
Preparation
Referencing
Make sure you attend the lectures, especially the first and the last one,
where we will be ‘unpacking’ this assignment in greater detail.
GISMA Business School requires that students use Harvard Referencing.
Plagiarism and
Cheating
Your attention is drawn to the UniversityÂ’s stated position on plagiarism. THE
WORK OF OTHERS THAT IS INCLUDED IN THE ASSIGNMENT MUST BE
ATTRIBUTED TO ITS SOURCE (a list of references and bibliography must be
submitted).
Please note that this is intended to be an individual piece of work. Ensure
that you read through your work prior to submission. Action will be taken
where a student is suspected of having cheated or engaged in any dishonest
practice. Students are referred to the University regulations on plagiarism
and other forms of academic misconduct. Students must not copy or collude
with one another or present any information that they themselves have not
generated.
For more information on Plagiarism, please see the relevant section in your
Programme Handbook.
Case study: Build a Transformation Team for the “Axis”.
Briefing for Assessment in M503 Behavioral Competencies in Virtual Teams
You work as a Transformation Manager for Liquid Assets (LA), a financial service provider who has global
operations. LA has made substantial acquisitions over the last 10 years but has so far never made the
effort of integrating these acquisitions. While there is a common IT backbone system, such a backbone
does not exist in processes of branding, products, clients, and administration. Management is convinced
that there is a lot of potential for uniting LAÂ’s operations and its several acquisitions under one common
brand.
Specifically, LA sees tremendous opportunities in its Latin American and Asian sales
territories, particularly India, China and Australia. In particular, LA’s operations and
acquisitions in Mexico, Brazil, India, Mainland China, Hong Kong and Australia are critical to LA’s future
strategy because they are growth markets. The plan is to closely integrate
operations in North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia into an entity
internally referred to as “the Axis.”
The transition of the various operations in the diverse geographies should be managed by a team that you are
given the responsibility for as the Team Lead. Your team must not exceed the headcount of 10 including
yourself.
Your management gives you full discretion to select the people you want in your team.
However, your manager thinks that it is politically wise to have a fair balance of team members representing
as many geographies as possible in your team. Functionally, you will know that you need people with IT
skills, with a project management background, and with sales/business development, and also aboveaverage communication skills in your team.
You pull together a team of experts to prepare yourself for that important career step that is due for you now.
What you put together in a brief presentation or report for your manager is an overview of the how you
are going to build the team, how you conduct the selection process, what infrastructure, processes and
policies you plan to do install to get your team up and running:
Team composition — how are you going to select the people and what are your assumptions
about competencies and personal characteristics of the people in your team
2. Communication policy incl. ground rules
3. Communication infrastructure incl. technologies, meeting schedule
4. Even if you all get it right — what can still go wrong
1.
Ad 1. You have just gone through a training on psychometric testing and you aware of several tools which you
can you to build assumptions about the competencies of people who you need to get the team to
performance.
Ad 2. You are aware that you will have a truly global team with representatives of different
cultures. You think that speaking English will iron out most of the intercultural difficulties
that may occur. Your expert team alerts you that you need to build a truly inclusive team culture and advise
you that you should document your ideas about a positive and inclusive intercultural team in a kind of
“Team Manifesto“.
Ad 3. /Ad 4. You are aware that you have to communicate a lot with your team. You are
uncertain how to set up communication and which technology to use. Your expert team has some brilliant
ideas. Effectively, you see the need to build an organizational agenda (which is what the presentation or
report will cover) but there is also your own agenda i.e., your power sphere which you do not want to
share with your manager, but you are keen to hear what advise your team of experts has about this.
