NSF Ideas Labs: Workforce Development Needs in Biology

该项目测试并促进了一种创造性的问题解决方法，该方法开发并吸引了多学科研究团队，以产生根本创新的研究议程。这个项目建立了一个自然的实验来检验一种方法，这种方法让研究人员参与到一个新颖的合作过程中，以开发潜在的变革性想法，以解决任何给定的STEM学科中劳动力发展的挑战，在这种情况下是生物学。具体地说，该项目采用参与式行动研究(PAR)方法来促进问题解决环境的发展，并研究这种现实世界的问题解决情况，以便：(1)反复检查协作和创造性问题解决所涉及的复杂的社会和智力过程，以及(2)在本科STEM教育中制定新的跨学科研究议程，以满足生物学特有的劳动力需求。因此，该项目的影响有可能成为多学科研究小组合作的复杂过程的展示，作为对参与合作和创造性问题解决的社会和个人过程的测试，以及作为记录发展生物学未来劳动力所需的根本性创新研究议程的一种手段。

This project tests and facilitates a creative problem solving methodology that develops and engages multi-disciplinary research teams in order to produce radically innovative research agendas. This project establishes a natural experiment to examine a methodology that engages researchers in a novel collaborative process to develop potentially transformative ideas that will address the challenge of workforce development in any given STEM discipline, Biology in this case. Specifically, the project adapts a participatory action research (PAR) approach to facilitate the development of a problem solving environment and to study this real world problem solving situation in order to: (1) iteratively examine the complex social and intellectual processes involved in collaboration and in creative problem solving and (2) develop novel interdisciplinary research agendas in undergraduate STEM education that address workforce needs unique to Biology. Thus, the project's impact has potential for serving as a demonstration of the complex process of collaboration in multi-disciplinary research groups, as a test of social and individual process involved in collaboration and in creative problem solving, and as a means for documenting the development of radically innovative research agendas needed to develop the future workforce in Biology.