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1. Setting the stage for co-creation: Using workshops to scaffold interdisciplinary research, collaboration, and community building

   Kershaw, T.C.; Tripathy, S.T.; Liu, H.; Chandra, K. (June 2023, Proceedings of the 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

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

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--43082  

   Kershaw, Trina; Tripathy, Susan; Liu, Hong; Chandra, Kavitha (June 2023, ASEE Conferences)

   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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3. When Workers Want to Say No: A View into Critical Consciousness and Workplace Democracy in Data Work

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3637433  

   DiSalvo, Carl; Rothschild, Annabel; Schenck, Lara L; Shapiro, Ben Rydal; DiSalvo, Betsy (April 2024, Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction)

   In this paper, we describe and reflect upon the development of critical consciousness and workplace democracy within an experimental workplace called DataWorks. Through DataWorks, we hire adults from communities historically minoritized in computing education and data careers, and train them in entry-level data skills developed through work on client projects. In this process, workers gain a range of skills. Some of these skills are technical, such as programming for data analysis; some are managerial, such as scoping and bidding projects; others are social, perhaps even political, such as the ability to say No to projects. In what follows, we describe a workshop series developed to build the workers' critical literacy and consciousness about their data work, specifically regarding the use of data in machine learning systems. After that, we describe a data project the workers questioned and resisted because they determined the work to be harmful. In that process, they demonstrated and enacted a critical consciousness towards data and machine learning. Reflecting on this enactment of data-focused critical consciousness, we identify themes that characterize a democratic workplace, describe the work of designing for organizational action and institutional relations, and discuss how worker and researcher positionality affects this work. In doing so, we argue for enabling workers to resist and refuse harmful data work and challenge the standard power structures of academic research and data work. 

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4. The principles of tomorrow's university

   https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.17425.1  

   Katz, Daniel S.; Allen, Gabrielle; Barba, Lorena A.; Berg, Devin R.; Bik, Holly; Boettiger, Carl; Borgman, Christine L.; Brown, C. Titus; Buck, Stuart; Burd, Randy; et al (January 2018, F1000Research)

   In the 21st Century, research is increasingly data- and computation-driven. Researchers, funders, and the larger community today emphasize the traits of openness and reproducibility. In March 2017, 13 mostly early-career research leaders who are building their careers around these traits came together with ten university leaders (presidents, vice presidents, and vice provosts), representatives from four funding agencies, and eleven organizers and other stakeholders in an NIH- and NSF-funded one-day, invitation-only workshop titled "Imagining Tomorrow's University." Workshop attendees were charged with launching a new dialog around open research – the current status, opportunities for advancement, and challenges that limit sharing. The workshop examined how the internet-enabled research world has changed, and how universities need to change to adapt commensurately, aiming to understand how universities can and should make themselves competitive and attract the best students, staff, and faculty in this new world. During the workshop, the participants re-imagined scholarship, education, and institutions for an open, networked era, to uncover new opportunities for universities to create value and serve society. They expressed the results of these deliberations as a set of 22 principles of tomorrow's university across six areas: credit and attribution, communities, outreach and engagement, education, preservation and reproducibility, and technologies. Activities that follow on from workshop results take one of three forms. First, since the workshop, a number of workshop authors have further developed and published their white papers to make their reflections and recommendations more concrete. These authors are also conducting efforts to implement these ideas, and to make changes in the university system.  Second, we plan to organise a follow-up workshop that focuses on how these principles could be implemented. Third, we believe that the outcomes of this workshop support and are connected with recent theoretical work on the position and future of open knowledge institutions. 

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5. Envisioning Extraterrestrial Construction and the Future Construction Workforce: A Collective Perspective

   https://doi.org/10.22260/ISARC2024/0072  

   Jafari, Amirhosein; Zhu, Yimin; Karunatillake, Suniti; Qian, Jennifer; Jeong, Shinhee; Kazemian, Ali; Webb, Andrew (June 2024, https://www.iaarc.org/)

   Humanity’s evolution toward an interplanetary species poses a new frontier for the construction industry: extraterrestrial construction. With fast technological advancements in manufacturing and robotics, it is a matter of when, not if, before humans make perpetual habitats on nearby planetary bodies. We envision the emerging frontier of the construction industry as extraterrestrial construction, where the role of workers and their required skills will change dramatically. Due to the extreme and hazardous outer-space conditions, the future of extraterrestrial construction will be technology-intensive, from using onsite machine and robot operations to using cyber-physical systems for managing logistical operations. Accordingly, the role and skillsets of construction workers in future extraterrestrial construction projects will contrast with the current practices on Earth. We aim to present a collective perspective on the nature of future extraterrestrial construction and the hierarchy of the skills required by future workers, as well as emerging technologies that can be used for developing a future-ready workforce. To accomplish this, we convened a national interdisciplinary workshop, engaging diverse stakeholders in the United States, including researchers, educators, and professionals, from academia, industry, and government. This paper summarizes the outcomes of our workshop, structured around three core themes: future work (extraterrestrial construction), future workers (extraterrestrial workforce), and future technology (emerging technologies for workforce training). The detailed exploration within these three themes marks an initial endeavor to chart a course for training in extraterrestrial construction, particularly with NASA’s Moon to Mars Program in mind. 

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