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5th Annual International Science of Team Science (SciTS) Conference

 When:          August 6-8, 2014

 

Where:        Hyatt Regency

                     208 Barton Springs, Austin, TX 78704

SciTS and VIVO to hold Co-located Conferences in 2014

 

Click Here to register online for these workshops

 

All Day Sessions (8:30am - 4:00pm, with a one-hour lunch)

 

Group Concept Mapping and Interaction Analysis for Team Science Planning and Evaluation

Presenters: Mary Kane and Michael Huffman, Concept Systems -- http://www.conceptsystems.com

Group Concept Mapping is a widely used tool to articulate team research priorities and enhance research design, implementation, and evaluation. Ideal for seeking and valuing the voices of research team members in research design, it has proven value in articulating the priorities of the community in which research takes place. GCM connects the knowledge of stakeholders with mixed methods to yield community or team-specific frameworks on issues of relevance.

This workshop is for researchers and evaluators with some familiarity with Group Concept Mapping or team strategy development for research. As an intermediate level training, this workshop links the philosophy and practice of Group Concept Mapping to community based participatory research and team science. It extends and builds upon basic GCM skills and practices, and introduces functional interactive analysis- a new application of network analytics to the GCM methodology. Through the use of small group exercises, practice and lectures, participants will learn skills for successfully engaging communities and teams, and systematically collecting and representing group wisdom. Participants will explore decision-making processes for finalizing the map output, and review approaches for producing results that increase the maps’ utilization. Individuals attending this workshop will be able to apply their learning to projects that require team model and research design construction, and incorporate stakeholder participation and group conceptualization.

 

Framing the Work Space: an Alphabet of Components for Great Team-work 

Presenters: Derek Wade; Kumido  Adaptive Strategies, and Jasmina Nikolic; Professor, University of Belgrade and Advisor to the Dean; VP, Higher Education Reform Experts Team, Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Republic of Serbia

This workshop will guide participants through implementation of a systems approach, based on a particular framework, that encourages team synthesis of individual expertise into holistic outcomes under tight time constraints. This framework has demonstrated repeated success in improving processes, teams, and outcomes in a variety of transdisciplinary contexts. Participants will experience many of the joys and challenges inherent to transdisciplinary work as they form, produce, analyze and complete a team project through use of the framework components.Participants will use problem definition and kanban1 workflow collaboration, combined with incremental success criteria, to solve issues of transdisciplinary team approaches during simulation of a new research center needing to improve its translational research infrastructure and processes. Through case study, technique briefing, group exercise, and debrief, participants will explore:

  • Components of a ‘framed’ collaborative network: roles, flow, emergent problem definition, iterations, incremental outcomes, and reflective improvement
  • Problems for which the principles of the framework are best suited: complex/chaotic domain interactions and the need for intra-team coordination
  • Identification of misapplication of traditional methodologies to complex/chaotic interactions vis-a-vis ‘analysis paralysis,’ siloed work, and linear, additive outcomes vs. synergistic work
  • Problem definition via emergent vs. deterministic processes 

Morning Sessions (8:30am - 12:00pm)

 

Using Team Science to Teach Team Science Skills with Team-Based Learning (TBL)

Presenter: Wayne Mccormack, University of Florida -- http://mccormacklab.pathology.ufl.edu/

What better way could there be to teach team science skills in the classroom than having students actually use them while they learn? Team-based learning (TBL) is a structured collaborative learning method that uses a specific sequence of individual work, group work and immediate feedback to motivate students to increasingly hold each other accountable for coming to class prepared and contribute to discussion. TBL focuses classroom time on the application of knowledge through problem-solving and decision-making in a team setting. This “TBL 101” hands-on workshop will provide the single best introduction to TBL, and will be conducted in the TBL format. Participants will be asked to prepare in advance by reading a short paper about TBL. During the workshop, participants will be strategically divided into teams, take a readiness assurance test, and then solve a series of application exercises by engaging actively with their team members. The structure, process, and essential characteristics of an effective TBL module will be emphasized. By the conclusion of this workshop, the participant will be able to: 

1) Explain the key components of a successful TBL module; 
2) Outline how they would construct a TBL module from a set of objectives; 
3) Describe how they might convert a session they already teach into a TBL module; and
4) Illustrate how to transform a small group into a productive learning-team. 

The workshop will conclude with a discussion of how and why TBL works, and evidence for improved learning using TBL in a variety of academic settings.

 

Using HUBzero to Create "Hubs" for Online Collaboration 

 Presenter: Michael McLennan; Purdue University; http://hubzero.org/members/1016

 The HUBzero® Platform for Scientific Collaboration is an open source software package used to create web sites for research, education, and scientific collaboration. Some call them “science gateways,” or “collaboratories.” We call them “hubs” for the community. So far, HUBzero has been used to create more than 50 such hubs across a wide range of scientific disciplines, including nanotechnology, bio-fuels, environmental modeling, volcanic activity, earthquake mitigation, microelectromechanical systems, cancer research, pharmaceutical engineering, and STEM education, to name a few. All together, these sites have served more than 1,000,000 visitors from 172 countries worldwide during the past year alone.In June 2011, the National Science and Technology Council’s Materials Genome Initiative for Global Competitiveness highlighted one of these hubs, nanoHUB.org, as an exemplar of “open innovation” that is critical for global competitiveness. In August 2011, HUBzero won the Campus Technology Innovators Award for IT Infrastructure and Systems.

Participants of this workshop will learn how to leverage the features of HUBzero to create new “hubs” for their own communities. Researchers in Team Science will learn about the various communities that exist and the capabilities that they are using, and also gain an understanding of data that these hubs collect, which can be used for team science research in various areas. During this workshop, participants will access a virtual machine representing a brand new hub and explore the features of that hub. Each hub includes many features for collaboration, such as:

1) the ability to create user groups with blogs, wikis, calendars, and discussion forums;

2) private project areas for data exchange, with to-do lists for task management;

3) lightweight data sharing in a social network with the ability to “like,” comment, and repost data;

4) community “wish lists” for brainstorming features; and

5) question-and-answer forum with incentives for participation.

This workshop will walk participants through various features with hands-on exploration of the functionality. It will present case studies of communities that have leveraged or perhaps even shunned various features. It will describe the data collected by various hubs and how it has been and could be leveraged for detailed studies of user interaction. For more details about HUBzero, visit http://hubzero.org.

Afternoon Sessions (1:00pm - 4:30pm)

Evidence-based Guidance for the Successful Praxis of Team Science

Presenter: Holly Falk-Krzesinski; Elsevier 

Team science initiatives are characterized by cross-disciplinary collaboration focused on complex problem-, project-, or product-oriented research. Over the last decade, academia has generated an upsurge in team science initiatives, while external funding agencies in the United States and around the globe have made more collaborative and team-based science funding opportunities available. Studies on research centers funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) have demonstrated that team science initiatives entail significant coordination costs. As a result, team science takes more time, at least proximally, than individual research; however, studies have also demonstrated a distal payoff in terms of research acceleration. Consequently, it is imperative that team science leaders and practitioners understand the most effective practices for productive team science.

Through a combination of lively lecture and interactive small group activities, this workshop will arm participants with a collection of evidence-based tools and resources for implementing effective practices in team science in the areas of team assembly and composition; trust and communication; expert discovery and collaboration; interdisciplinary grantsmanship; and networking. The workshop will: o Provide an overview of team science, from empirical research to practice; o Offer evidence-based insights and techniques on team science leadership; o Demonstrate tools and resources that promote collaboration, communication, trust, and conflict management in science teams; o Engage participants in a real-world case study discussion; o Describe specific strategies and tactics for grantsmanship to support team science; and, o Use the online TeamScience.net tool and Team Science Toolkit in practical, interactive experiences.