Board 384: Setting the Stage for Co-Creation: Using Workshops to Scaffold Interdisciplinary Research, Collaboration, and Community Building

Trina C. Kershaw; Susan Thomson Tripathy; Hong Liu; Kavitha Chandra

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Conference: 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Baltimore , Maryland
Publication Date: June 25, 2023
Start Date: June 25, 2023
End Date: June 28, 2023
Conference Session: NSF Grantees Poster Session
Tagged Topics: Diversity and NSF Grantees Poster Session
Page Count: 14
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--43082
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/43082
Download Count: 120

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Paper Authors

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Trina C. Kershaw University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth

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Trina Kershaw earned her PhD in Psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2006. She is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. She conducts multidisciplinary research in education and creativity under the broad umbrella of cognitive science. Recent work includes using co-creation to develop curricular materials in graduate engineering education; devising training to help undergraduates comprehend research articles; and conducting research about creativity in computer programming, engineering design, and within classic psychology paradigms.

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Susan Thomson Tripathy University of Massachusetts, Lowell orcid.org/0000-0001-5359-6045

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Dr. Susan Thomson Tripathy is a Research Associate at UMass Lowell who specializes in qualitative research methods. She received her doctorate in Anthropology from Harvard University.

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Hong Liu University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth

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Kavitha Chandra University of Massachusetts, Lowell

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Kavitha Chandra is the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Francis College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She directs the Research, Academics and Mentoring Pathways (RAMP) to Success program that aims to establish successful pathways to graduate school and interdisciplinary careers for new engineering undergraduates. Dr. Chandra’s research interests include design of data-driven stochastic models for applications in acoustics, communication networks and predictive analytics in education, model-based systems engineering and communications network traffic and performance modeling.

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Abstract

Co-creation in academe can take multiple forms. In this research, the co-creation focus is on collaboration between faculty and graduate students to develop educational modules. This activity is designed to improve graduate education and prepare students for conducting graduate research. In previous work presented at ASEE 2022, we discussed benefits and challenges of participating in the co-creation process. This current paper focuses on how we took lessons from our first year and transformed them into a structure to better support interdisciplinary research, collaboration, and community building.

We will discuss how we supported the process of co-creation by developing a series of workshops to scaffold student learning. Scaffolds are instructional methods and interventions that are designed to foster skill development by allowing for interactions between what students already know and what they have yet to learn. These workshops were designed using the tenets of the gold standard project-based learning (PjBL). The PjBL framework is itself a scaffold that is designed to build research competencies.

Specifically, to introduce a challenging problem or question, we created multiple technical overviews of the cyber-physical system theme of interest that would constitute the eventual educational modules. We scaffolded sustained inquiry by developing a workshop using techniques from the Right Question Institute, and also through a workshop about crafting your message for different audiences. To support the PjBL idea of authenticity, we developed a workshop about core values to help students connect personally to their project topics. To further support collaboration and community building, we developed a workshop to introduce ideas of interdisciplinary collaboration, including developing community agreements and recognizing and responding to microaggressions. Periodic reinforcements of these topics were incorporated as students progressed in their co-creation project. We assessed how students applied these topics through student reflections.

Scaffolding students’ learning helped to address co-creation challenges that were expressed by our pilot group, including not understanding the goals of the project and not feeling connected to the research. Observational data of the current groups suggests that students have better understanding of the co-creation process and are collaborating more effectively than our pilot group students, and focus group data confirmed these observations. We also collected feedback from students about the workshops to evaluate what is effective about them and what can be improved. Students felt skills taught in the workshops such as how to prioritize research questions, construct messages for specific audiences, and perform literature searches and reviews, were all effective and useful as they worked on their projects. For improvement, they suggested clearer objectives and more workshops that focus on technical aspects of the project work would be helpful.

Citation
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Kershaw, T. C., & Tripathy, S. T., & Liu, H., & Chandra, K. (2023, June), Board 384: Setting the Stage for Co-Creation: Using Workshops to Scaffold Interdisciplinary Research, Collaboration, and Community Building Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43082

TY - CPAPER
AB - Co-creation in academe can take multiple forms. In this research, the co-creation focus is on collaboration between faculty and graduate students to develop educational modules. This activity is designed to improve graduate education and prepare students for conducting graduate research. In previous work presented at ASEE 2022, we discussed benefits and challenges of participating in the co-creation process. This current paper focuses on how we took lessons from our first year and transformed them into a structure to better support interdisciplinary research, collaboration, and community building.

We will discuss how we supported the process of co-creation by developing a series of workshops to scaffold student learning. Scaffolds are instructional methods and interventions that are designed to foster skill development by allowing for interactions between what students already know and what they have yet to learn. These workshops were designed using the tenets of the gold standard project-based learning (PjBL). The PjBL framework is itself a scaffold that is designed to build research competencies.

Specifically, to introduce a challenging problem or question, we created multiple technical overviews of the cyber-physical system theme of interest that would constitute the eventual educational modules. We scaffolded sustained inquiry by developing a workshop using techniques from the Right Question Institute, and also through a workshop about crafting your message for different audiences. To support the PjBL idea of authenticity, we developed a workshop about core values to help students connect personally to their project topics. To further support collaboration and community building, we developed a workshop to introduce ideas of interdisciplinary collaboration, including developing community agreements and recognizing and responding to microaggressions. Periodic reinforcements of these topics were incorporated as students progressed in their co-creation project. We assessed how students applied these topics through student reflections.

Scaffolding students’ learning helped to address co-creation challenges that were expressed by our pilot group, including not understanding the goals of the project and not feeling connected to the research. Observational data of the current groups suggests that students have better understanding of the co-creation process and are collaborating more effectively than our pilot group students, and focus group data confirmed these observations. We also collected feedback from students about the workshops to evaluate what is effective about them and what can be improved. Students felt skills taught in the workshops such as how to prioritize research questions, construct messages for specific audiences, and perform literature searches and reviews, were all effective and useful as they worked on their projects. For improvement, they suggested clearer objectives and more workshops that focus on technical aspects of the project work would be helpful.
AU - Trina C. Kershaw
AU - Susan Thomson Tripathy
AU - Hong Liu
AU - Kavitha Chandra
CY - Baltimore , Maryland
DA - 2023/06/25
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Board 384: Setting the Stage for Co-Creation: Using Workshops to Scaffold Interdisciplinary Research, Collaboration, and Community Building
UR - https://peer.asee.org/43082
DO - 10.18260/1-2--43082
ER -