Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the design of choreographies or learning environments which the students participating in "Ocean i[superscript 3]" pass through during their participation in the project, which requires constant review and interpretation, in times of COVID-19. To this end, it is proposed to: define the institutional teaching choreographies to create authentic and meaningful environments for the active learning of university students; interpret the transversal competences for the sustainability developed in "Ocean i[superscript 3]" within the framework of institutional teaching choreographies; and value the strengths and weaknesses of the teaching choreographies implemented for the development of transversal competences for sustainability in a situation of health-care crisis. Design/methodology/approach: An exploratory method with an interpretative approach has been selected that enables us to address living and evolving scenarios, didactic choreographies and the development of competences for sustainability. Findings: The perception of students and teachers reveals that it is the use of a multilingual linguistic repertoire (multilingualism) that is most enhanced in "Ocean i[superscript 3]", although the global and integrative vision of problems and the integration and management of knowledge through contributions from different disciplines and the social context (transdisciplinarity) are also highlighted. Originality/value: This paper describes how face-to-face institutional teaching choreographies for an innovation project have been transformed into synchronous online choreographies encouraging the development of competences for sustainability.