Have you seen the The Walking Dead? The television series isn’t real, but have you ever wondered what happens in the ‘real world’ when a deadly virus breaks out? In April the IRISS Facilitation team worked with NSF ERC research scientists who want to develop vaccines and solutions for instances when viruses break out around the globe. The NSF ERC team travelled to campus for a 2-day knowledge innovation workshop where IRISS facilitated divergence and convergence thinking within the team.

The IRISS Speaker Series on Social Network Analysis hosted Dr. Jesse Fagan ‘11 who received his B.A and M.A. from our department. He presented “Self Driving Organizations: Organizational decision making using machine learning and email data” that examined how big data in organizations can be used to help organizations succeed and help employees to lead more satisfying and productive work lives. Fagan is a Lecturer of Data Analytics from the University of Exeter Business School in the United Kingdom. He visited CSU in April.

IRISS presented “Getting Great Responses from Your Online Surveys Using Qualtrics” on campus in January during CSU’s 40th Annual Professional Development Institute (PDI) put on by The Institute for Learning and Teaching (TILT). Attendees from all over campus filled LSC 322 to hear Jeni Cross and Jennifer Schneider discuss CSU’s recent purchase of a universal license for the survey tool Qualtrics for all university users. IRISS presented best practices for survey development, strategies for creating high quality survey questions, approaches that improve response rates, university policies for survey deployment on campus, and campus resources for survey development and analysis.

Jeni Cross, Ellen Fisher, and Hannah Love are traveling to the 10th Annual Science of Team Science (SciTS) 2019 Conference held at Michigan State University in Lansing May 20–23. CSU’s Team Science team has three presentations, one poster, and a workshop.

Presentations by the team:

  1. Principles of Community in Team Science
  2. “I’m ready, are you ready?” How do you know if your team is ready?
  3. Training and Development on Interdisciplinary Scientific Teams

Poster:

  1. Successful Process Evaluation Provides Insight into Team Development and Goal Attainment

Workshop Title (and partial abstract):

Teaching the Science of Team Science

Working on a team can be a challenge! Have you ever said, “I hate group projects” or “It isn’t natural for me to work on a team?” There is a growing body of literature on what makes good teams, but how do you “DO” team science, and how do you “TEACH” team science? Educating teams about team science involves various levels of education and concepts including developing a vision, engaging in the process, using facilitation, and creating a shared language. In addition, the critical skills needed for team science are slightly different for pre and post-doctoral trainees compared to PIs. Join us for this three-part workshop to discuss what training is needed for different research levels, learn about best practices, and participate in a 1-hour mini short course. The workshop will involve small group work, facilitated dialogues, and an active-learning training session. Be prepared to learn from each other and the facilitation team.