Investigating the Operational Meaning and Occurrence of Institutional Integration and Innovation in NSF's I-cubed Activity

本研究项目的重点是NSF机构整合创新活动(I3)获奖者如何将“机构整合”和“创新”的含义付诸实践，并试图量化这些校园范围内合作网络的性质和演变。该项目考察了活动(计划、预算、日程安排、评估)、组织/社会认同(认同单一的NSF计划/或一群从事赠款的人，而不是认同更广泛的NSF努力和从事该工作的人)以及心理模型或图式(对问题的性质、需要解决的问题和解决这些问题的适当战略的共同认知)发生变化的程度。这项工作还着眼于i3招标中确定的特定主题的选择以及项目必须围绕哪些主题建立一体化--扩大参与、关键的教育节点、全球参与的劳动力、研究和教育的一体化以及研究和评估--似乎在多大程度上影响了项目的成果和成功。在方法上，该项目采用两种互补的方法--社会网络分析(SNA)和案例研究--来检查NSF项目的机构整合。SNA是一种方法论，最近才被应用于教育问题，它为研究i3机构内来自不同NSF项目的个人之间的互动提供了一种新的方法。该研究项目研究网络，因为它们隐含在广泛的社会现象中，并可以为i3活动和对其至关重要的伙伴关系提供重要的视角。SNA应用的逻辑中的指导性假设是，网络的整体结构不仅对其个人成员有影响，而且对群体、社区和机构文化也有影响。因此，SNA为描述和评估人与人之间的关系质量和了解联系模式提供了一种工具。为了更全面地了解“是什么”和“为什么”，这项研究包括了i3项目的案例研究。这些研究是由一个由内容(体制改革、组织发展)和评价专家组成的多学科小组对i3项目进行的为期3天的实地访问编写的，其中包括与直接或间接参与该项目的个人进行的关键线人访谈和文件审查。

This research project focuses on how awardees in NSF's Innovation through Institution Integration activity ("I3") operationalize the meaning of "institutional integration" and "innovation" and seeks to quantify the nature and evolution of these campus-wide collaborative networks. The project examines the extent to which changes occur in activities (planning, budgeting, scheduling, evaluating), organizational/social identity (identification with a single NSF program/and or group of people working on a grant as opposed to identification with NSF efforts more broadly and the people engaged in the work), and mental models or schema (shared cognition about the nature of the problem, what needs to be addressed, and appropriate strategies for addressing them). This work is also looking at the extent to which the selection of particular themes identified in the I3 solicitation and around which projects must build integration - broadening participation, critical educational junctures, globally engaged workforce, integration of research and education, and research and evaluation - appear to affect project outcomes and success. Methodologically, the project employs two complementary approaches, Social Network Analysis (SNA) and case studies, to examine institutional integration of NSF programs. SNA, a methodology that has only recently been applied to educational issues, provides a new way to study the interactions among individuals from disparate NSF programs within an I3 institution. The research project studies networks as they are implicit in a wide range of social phenomena, and can provide an important perspective on the I3 activity and the partnerships that are so central to it. The guiding assumption in the logic of SNA applications is that the overall structure of a network has consequences not only for its individual members, but also for the group, community, and institutional culture. Therefore, SNA provides a tool for describing and assessing the quality of relations among people and understanding the pattern of connections. To create a more comprehensive picture of not only the "what" but also the "why," the research includes case studies of I3 projects. These studies are developed from 3-day site visits to the I3 projects by a multidisciplinary team composed of content (institutional change, organizational development) and evaluation experts, and include key informant interviews with individuals directly or indirectly involved with the project and review of documents.