Roni Reiter-Palmon, Ph.D. - US grants

Social web technologies have opened unprecedented opportunities for public- and private-sector entities to leverage the collective power of remotely-connected online participants to solve shared problems. However, both practitioners and researchers report that the most challenging issue in open participatory problem-solving initiatives is keeping online participants continuously engaged in a specific project, with sustained interest throughout the entire project cycle. Mindful of the opportunities and challenges of participatory online problem-solving, this study aims to accomplish two research goals: First, based on a theoretical understanding of sustained participatory engagement, we explore managerial and technological innovations that use social web technologies to foster online participants' continuous engagement in shared problem-solving projects. Second, we develop intervention techniques to expedite and sustain the collective ideation process, to enhance the likelihood that genuinely creative and useful problem-solving ideas can be effectively and continuously gathered from participants' ongoing contributions. To achieve these goals, the project pursues a three phased research plan: In the first phase, we seek to identify message-presentation formats that increase the conversion rate of online visitors into contributing participants. In the second phase, we seek to identify user-interface designs that facilitate goal-oriented human-computer interaction and sustain participant engagement over time. In the third phase, we seek to develop and field test brainstorming techniques that leverage social-web interfaces to promote the collaborative ideation process.

Our proposed study advances practical and theoretical understanding of engagement in online collaboration to solve shared problems. We have built a close partnership with a leading crowdsourcing firm, which provides a participatory technological platform to facilitate collective problem solving in cities, school districts, universities, distributed research communities, etc. This organization has made available data from over 250 real-world problem-solving projects for our analysis. Moreover, the organization has agreed to implement our proposed technological and process interventions in a series of empirical comparative field-tests. These investigations will allow us to develop a theory-driven and evidence-based comprehensive online participatory decision management system that will employ the affordances of social computing to support virtual organizations of all types in maximizing participant engagement in creative collaborative deliberation and problem-solving.

This project aims to serve the national interest by improving undergraduate engineering education. Specifically, it will create a new teaching approach called Complex Problem Based Learning and use it in undergraduate civil engineering courses. The approach is designed to enhance students' ability to solve transdisciplinary, complex problems. Such problems often have a global scope and can only be solved through the work of collaborative teams that include scientists, engineers, social scientists, humanities experts, and others. The ability to tackle such complex, global problems is important in today?s workplace. As a result, engineering graduates need both disciplinary knowledge and skills such as creativity, design thinking, trans-disciplinary teamwork skills, and the ability to communicate with non-technical stakeholders. The goal of the project is to use the Complex Problem Based Learning approach to provide multiple opportunities for civil engineering students to develop and practice these skills. This goal is well aligned with the National Academy of Engineering?s vision for engineering (The Engineer of 2020), which encourages recognition of the leadership role engineers will have in industry, government, and the non-profit sectors of the future economy. The project will also contribute new knowledge about engineering education by investigating the impact of this Complex Problem Based Learning approach.

The Complex Problem Based Learning approach will be implemented in five engineering design courses ranging from freshman to senior year, enabling its impact to be evaluated across a range of student proficiency levels. Through this approach, students will be guided through a facilitated problem-solving process built around consensus, problem driven research, and stakeholder-driven problems. Multiple sources of data will be collected to evaluate the success of the Complex Problem Based Learning approach. Data from student self-assessments will be collected via survey tools. The CATME platform hosted by Purdue will be used to collect student self-assessments of teams and participatory decision-making. A factorial experimental design methodology will be used to investigate impacts of Complex Problem Based Learning on civil engineering education and outcomes. The assessments of creativity will focus on both the person and the product, and evaluate whether there is a strong correlation between the two. The Kaufman Domains of Creativity Scale instrument will be used for self-assessment of personal creativity and the Consensual Assessment Technique will be used for assessment of the product?s creativity. The broader impact of this award includes the development of the Complex Problem Based Learning approach, which might be used for education of students at any age and in any STEM discipline. By fostering creative mindsets and creative problem-solving skills, this approach can help develop a creative and reflective STEM workforce that can thrive in the future of increased automation. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.