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1. Investigating the Development of Team Science Skills and an Improved Understanding of Multidisciplinary Research through Parallel Courses in Biology, Geology, and Environmental Engineering

   https://doi.org/10.18833/spur/7/2/9  

   Vance-Chalcraft, Heather; Etheridge, Randall; O’Driscoll, Michael; Peralta, Ariane; Andersen, Clark; Freeland, Fiona; Walker, Joi (January 2023, Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research)

   Mabrouk, Patricia (Ed.)

   Collaborative teamwork is fundamental to successful research and is a desirable skill set for employers. Yet students receive little training in how to effectively work in teams. This article presents the preliminary design and implementation of course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) in biology, geology, and environmental engineering in which student teams address questions related to their discipline while contributing to a shared research project. Team science training in communication, research planning, and conflict resolution was embedded into CURE classes at a regional R2 university. Although barriers to this approach were present, evidence in the form of writing prompt scores and team science products suggested student understanding of effective teams and the benefits of working with individuals within and across disciplines to solve complex problems increased. 

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2. A convergence research approach to resolving ‘wicked problems’: Lessons from an interdisciplinary research team in land use science

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2025.103538  

   Devine, Jennifer A; Magliocca, Nicholas R; McSweeney, Kendra; Tellman, Beth; Fagan, Matthew; Sesnie, Steven E; Nielsen, Erik (April 2025, Applied Geography)

   Many contemporary social and environmental problems are increasingly ‘wicked.’ Convergence research offers an effective approach to tackle wicked problems by integrating diverse epistemologies, methodologies, and expertise. Yet, there exists little discussion of how to develop and employ a convergence research approach. This article describes our collaborative research efforts to achieve convergence research and team science. For over a decade, we have sought to understand how drug trafficking activities, and the counternarcotics efforts designed to thwart them, catalyze catastrophic changes in landscapes and communities. We first discuss how understanding our wicked problem called for epistemological convergence of diverse data through a team science approach. We then unpack the potential insights and challenges of methodological convergence by drawing upon examples from our land cover and land use change analysis. Third, we argue that the nature of complex, pressing problems requires convergence research to be politically engaged and accountable to the multiple communities affected. This article aims to provide research teams insight into how to pursue epistemological and methodological convergence while attending to the inherent politics of producing knowledge about wicked problems. 

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3. How Approaches to Animal Swarm Intelligence Can Improve the Study of Collective Intelligence in Human Teams

   https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence8010009  

   O’Bryan, Lisa; Beier, Margaret; Salas, Eduardo (March 2020, Journal of Intelligence)

   Researchers of team behavior have long been interested in the essential components of effective teamwork. Much existing research focuses on examining correlations between team member traits, team processes, and team outcomes, such as collective intelligence or team performance. However, these approaches are insufficient for providing insight into the dynamic, causal mechanisms through which the components of teamwork interact with one another and impact the emergence of team outcomes. Advances in the field of animal behavior have enabled a precise understanding of the behavioral mechanisms that enable groups to perform feats that surpass the capabilities of the individuals that comprise them. In this manuscript, we highlight how studies of animal swarm intelligence can inform research on collective intelligence in human teams. By improving the ability to obtain precise, time-varying measurements of team behaviors and outcomes and building upon approaches used in studies of swarm intelligence to analyze and model individual and group-level behaviors, researchers can gain insight into the mechanisms underlying the emergence of collective intelligence. Such understanding could inspire targeted interventions to improve team effectiveness and support the development of a comparative framework of group-level intelligence in animal and human groups. 

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4. Conducting Research at the Intersection of HCI and Health: Building and Supporting Teams with Diverse Expertise to Increase Public Health Impact

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3613905.3636298  

   Agapie, Elena; Karkar, Ravi; Aung, Tricia; Burgess, Eleanor R; Chinguwa, Munyaradzi Joel; Graham, Andrea K; Klasnja, Predrag; Lyon, Aaron; McCall, Terika; Munson, Sean A; et al (May 2024, CHI EA '24: Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems)

   Research at the intersection of human-computer interaction (HCI) and health is increasingly done by collaborative cross-disciplinary teams. The need for cross-disciplinary teams arises from the interdisciplinary nature of the work itself—with the need for expertise in a health discipline, experimental design, statistics, and computer science, in addition to HCI. This work can also increase innovation, transfer of knowledge across fields, and have a higher impact on communities. To succeed at a collaborative project, researchers must effectively form and maintain a team that has the right expertise, integrate research perspectives and work practices, align individual and team goals, and secure funding to support the research. However, successfully operating as a team has been challenging for HCI researchers, and can be limited due to a lack of training, shared vocabularies, lack of institutional incentives, support from funding agencies, and more; which significantly inhibits their impact. This workshop aims to draw on the wealth of individual experiences in health project team collaboration across the CHI community and beyond. By bringing together different stakeholders involved in HCI health research, together, we will identify needs experienced during interdisciplinary HCI and health collaborations. We will identify existing practices and success stories for supporting team collaboration and increasing HCI capacity in health research. We aim for participants to leave our workshop with a toolbox of methods to tackle future team challenges, a community of peers who can strive for more effective teamwork, and feeling positioned to make the health impact they wish to see through their work. 

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5. Introducing Agility into Research Teams

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE56618.2022.9962665  

   Ochoa, Omar; Reynolds, Sarah A. (October 2022, 2022 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE))

   In this paper, we propose an innovative practice based on agile software development methods. This research approach introduces agility into learning of research in an academic environment, resulting in an Agile Research Team. Such a research team follows an agile approach, based on modifications to the Scrum approach, to collaboratively learn about research, and to manage research projects and the researchers involved. Success in research requires self-motivation, collaboration, and knowledge exchange. Traditional research occurs in top-down research groups that are led by a leading researcher, who oversees postdoctoral researchers and Ph.D. students, who in turn manage graduate and undergraduate level students. It is up to individual researchers to stay motivated, to acquire the necessary skills to conduct research, and, oftentimes, to decide what the following steps are. Much like effective research groups, agile software development approaches rely on individuals to form self-organizing and motivated teams to deliver technical excellence. Agile software development teams also require an environment of sharing knowledge between senior and junior developers. Agile approaches can facilitate the efficient exchange of knowledge due to a strong dependency on face-to-face communication and teamwork. With the emerging adoption of agile methods for software development in industry and its ability to expedite projects’ delivery, we argue that such approaches can potentially provide similar benefits for researchers and students in academia. The advantages that agile methods provide are twofold: the ability to respond faster to change, and a shorter feedback loop, which facilitates the learning of how to conduct research. This paper explores the impactful benefits of using an agile approach to manage research team projects to keep researchers motivated, enhance the learning of knowledge and research skills, increase scalability, and foster inclusivity. This paper will also present the roles, responsibilities, and processes defined for managing an Agile Research Team to support adoption of the approach with other research teams. In addition, results and lessons learned are presented following our experience with using the approach as described in this work. 

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