How interdisciplinary collaboration helps communicate engineering research to community audiences
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Date
2022-08
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
American Society for Engineering Education
Abstract
Does interdisciplinary collaboration make a difference when it comes to communicating
engineering concepts to community audiences? This research focuses on the effect of
communication strategies on community attitudes toward engineering research. Two cohorts of
four academic researchers each, representing eight different disciplinary backgrounds (aviation
planning, cancer research, math education, musicology, chemical/biomolecular engineering,
material science, soil science, and theater) developed research communication outputs for the
public by creating: 1) an individual video presenting their research through the lens of their
discipline alone; and 2) a convergent video where they collaboratively discussed their research
with others in their cohort around a common theme, integrating all of their disciplinary lenses.
Using a panel of respondents (n = 2,938) procured through Qualtrics, and purposefully recruited
to create a diverse sample in age and racial/ethnic background, the research team randomly
assigned respondents to watch one of three video treatments: one individual video, multiple
individual videos, or a convergent video. Then, respondents answered a series of questions about
their interest and knowledge of several STEM topics, both before and after watching the
video(s). This retrospective pre/post questionnaire technique helps to alleviate response-shift bias
present in self-assessed changes in learning attitudes. Our findings show that collaborative
presentation videos increased self-reported audience interest in engineering, and perceptions of
disciplinary relatedness more than the non-collaborative, individual presentations made by the
same researchers. These results suggest a beneficial role for collaborative communication
strategies to foster interest in engineering among public audiences, even among people without a
background in STEM. Further, collaborative communication led to an increased sense of
relatedness among different disciplines, which may be useful for effective public research
communication about interdisciplinary engineering projects.
Description
Keywords
interdisciplinary collaboration, engineering communication, science communication, collaborative communication, convergence, descriptive statistics
Citation
Meyer, J., & Weiss, L., & Longmeier, M., & Gopalakrishnan, S., & Hayde, D., & Cai, M. (2022, August), How interdisciplinary collaboration helps communicate engineering research to community audiences Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. https://peer.asee.org/40762