NSF Ideas Labs: Workforce Development in Engineering

这个项目测试并促进了一种创造性的问题解决方法，旨在产生根本创新的研究议程。该项目建立了一个自然实验，以检查在一个新颖的协作过程中发展多学科研究团队的过程，该过程使研究人员参与开发潜在的变革性、基于研究的和产生研究的想法。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教育中开发新的跨学科研究议程，以满足工程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复杂过程的展示，作为对协作和创造性问题解决所涉及的社会和个人过程的测试，以及作为一种手段，记录发展当前和未来工程学劳动力所需的根本性创新研究议程的发展。

This project tests and facilitates a creative problem solving methodology designed to produce radically innovative research agendas. This project establishes a natural experiment to examine a process that develops multi-disciplinary research teams in a novel collaborative process that engages researchers in the development of potentially transformative research-based and research-generating ideas. 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 Engineering. 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 processes involved in collaboration and creative problem solving, and as a means for documenting the development of radically innovative research agendas needed to develop the current and future workforce in Engineering.