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.
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Board 384: Setting the Stage for Co-Creation: Using Workshops to Scaffold Interdisciplinary Research, Collaboration, and Community Building
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.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2105701
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10525103
- Publisher / Repository:
- ASEE Conferences
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Baltimore , Maryland
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--43082
