TRIAGE: Techniques for Resolving Intragroup Conflict to Advance Graduate Education

这项授予克莱姆森大学的国家科学基金会研究生教育创新（IGE）奖将测试新方法的有效性，以教育新一代拥抱冲突的科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）研究生。由于STEM专业人员应对的挑战越来越复杂，需要广泛的专业知识，组织通常希望团队能够产生创造性的创新解决方案。因此，进入当今STEM劳动力市场的研究生有望在跨学科、跨职能和人口多样化的团队中工作。尽管这样的团队具有巨大的创新和创造力的潜力，但多样化的团队面临着更大的团队冲突风险。培养团队合作技能的现有工具没有充分解决冲突管理技能，也很少关注研究生群体。该奖项的重点是开发和测试新的方法，通过建立冲突管理技能来培养研究生成为有效的团队成员，从而促进他们进入职场后有效的团队合作。该项目借鉴了冲突管理方面的成熟科学，重点开发了一套工具，旨在帮助研究生培养冲突管理技能，评估团队中的冲突，并确定干预措施，帮助团队解决冲突。在开发完成后，这些工具将在克莱姆森大学STEM研究生中使用实验方法进行试点和评估。一旦在研究生群体中得到验证，这些工具将扩展到克莱姆森大学各领域的本科生和研究生以及格林维尔技术学院的学生。学生们将从一个为期一天的培训项目开始，重点是建设性的争议，这是一种旨在提高团队产生建设性的、以任务为中心的冲突的能力的方法。在培训项目之后，研究生将参与一种新颖的基于仪表板的方法来管理他们研究团队中的冲突。利用对研究生研究团队的调查产生的数据，仪表板将为学生提供有关团队冲突和其他团队合作过程的信息，以及在团队中实施的有针对性的干预措施。一旦在STEM研究生中得到验证，并扩展到克莱姆森大学的本科生和格林维尔技术学院的技术学院学生，该项目将以创建一套可移动的团队冲突工具结束，包括培训材料和仪表板的干预措施，这些工具将在网上向公众开放。研究生教育创新（IGE）项目专注于研究生教育的研究。IGE的目标是试点、测试和验证研究生教育的创新方法，并产生将这些方法推广到更广泛的社区所需的知识。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This National Science Foundation Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) award to Clemson University will test the effectiveness of novel approaches to educate a new generation of conflict-embracing science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) graduate students. As the challenges tackled by STEM professionals are increasingly complex and require wide ranging expertise, organizations often look to teams to generate creative, innovative solutions. Accordingly, graduate students entering today’s STEM workforce are expected to work on interdisciplinary, cross-functional, and demographically diverse teams. Although such teams have tremendous potential for innovation and creativity, diverse teams are at an increased risk of team conflict. Existing tools for building teamwork skills do not adequately address conflict management skills and rarely focus on the graduate student population. This award is focused on developing and testing new approaches to prepare graduate students as effective teammates by building conflict management skills to facilitate effective teamwork when they enter the workforce.Drawing from proven science on conflict management, this project focuses on developing a set of tools aimed at helping graduate students develop conflict management skills, assess conflict in their teams, and identify interventions to help their teams navigate conflict. Following their development, these tools will be piloted and evaluated amongst Clemson University STEM graduate students using an experimental approach. Once validated in the graduate population, the tools will be expanded to Clemson University undergraduate and graduate students across fields as well as students at Greenville Technical College. Students will begin with a day-long training program focused on constructive controversy, an approach aimed at improving teams’ ability to generate constructive, task-focused conflict. Following the training program, graduate students will participate in a novel dashboard-based approach to managing conflict in their research teams. Using data generated from surveys of graduate students’ research teams, dashboards will provide students with information about their team’s conflict and other teamwork processes alongside targeted interventions to implement within their teams. Once validated amongst STEM graduate students and expanded to undergraduate students at Clemson and technical college students at Greenville Technical College, the project will conclude with the creation of a set of transportable team conflict tools, including training materials and the dashboard’s interventions, which will be made accessible to the public online.The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program is focused on research in graduate education. The goals of IGE are to pilot, test and validate innovative approaches to graduate education and to generate the knowledge required to move these approaches into the broader community.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.