This project is funded by the Northwestern University Office of Provost, the NSF Grants: IIS-0838564, OCI-0904356, BCS-0940851, CNS-1010904, SBE-1063901, NIH award UL1RR024146-06S2, UL1RR025741, Army Research Laboratory W911NF-09-2-0053.
In this project, we are investigating how to self-assemble student- and faculty-based project teams that are optimally effective according to various criteria such as learning, cohesiveness, and final performance.
We plan to address our research goal in two phases. In phase one, we would first like to understand the socio-technical motivations behind the team formation process that influences students’ decisions to select potential teammates. We intend to use a multi-theoretical multilevel model of team assembly to examine which mechanisms (e.g., skill, level, role, resources) explain why students select others as team members. Then, in phase two, we will implement interventions in the team assembly process to modify the recommendations users receive. The goal would be to help them select more suitable teammates to facilitate improved learning, project designs, and cohesiveness. Ultimately, our goal is to determine if providing users more information about their potential teammates and allowing participants to choose their own teams gives them more agency in the process and increases their motivation to learn.
To help us address our research objectives, we use My Dream Team (MDT), a web-based team recommender tool developed by SONIC with the goal of facilitating the assembly process of project teams. The platform provides the opportunity to better understand the assembly behaviors of people through the application of social science theories and the analysis of digital trace data. MDT uses matching and ranking algorithms to provide theoretically driven recommendations for team membership.
Investigators:
SONIC Team Members:
Developers
SONIC Alumn
Gómez-Zará, D., Guo, M., DeChurch, L. A., & Contractor, N. S. (2020). The impact of displaying diversity information on the formation of self-assembling teams. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings (CHI 2020), April 25–30, 2019, Hawaii, USA.
Ichhaporia, R., Gómez-Zará, D., DeChurch, L., & Contractor, N. (2020). A Network Approach to the Formation of Self-assembled Teams. Complex Networks and Their Applications VIII, 969–981. Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-36683-4_77
Góméz-Zará, D., Ichhaporia, R., DeChurch, L. A., & Contractor, N. S. (2020, September 25-27). Do I know you? The effects of social capital on self-assembled teams [Poster presentation]. Virtual Organizational Communication Mini-Conference [OCMC]
Harris, A. M., Gómez-Zará, D., DeChurch, L. A., & Contractor, N. S. (2019). Joining together online: The trajectory of CSCW scholarship on group formation. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact., 3(CSCW), 27. doi:10.1145/3359250
Gómez-Zará, D., Andreoli, S., DeChurch, L. A., & Contractor, N. S. (2019). Discovering collaborators online: Assembling interdisciplinary teams online at an Argentinian University. Cuadernos.Info, (44), 21-41. doi.org/10.7764/cdi.44.1575
Gómez-Zará, D., Paras, M., Twyman, M., Lane, J. N., DeChurch, L. A., & Contractor, N. S. (2019). Who Would You Like to Work With?. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Glasgow, UK.
Gómez-Zará, D., Ng, J., Andreoli, S., Twyman, M., DeChurch, L., Contractor, N. (2018, October). Social cognition and team self-assembly: Competence, warmth, or embeddedness. Using team recommender systems to understand what people look for in their teammates. Paper presented at 13th Annual INGRoup Conference, Bethesda, USA. [Slides]
Gómez-Zará, D., & Contractor, N. (2018, April). How can we assemble better interdisciplinary teams? The “My Dream Team” experience at CITEP Lab. Presentation at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina. [Slides in Spanish]
Gómez-Zará, D., Ng, J., Twyman, M., DeChurch, L., Contractor, N. (2018, March). Social Cognition and Team Assembly: Competence, Warmth, or Embeddedness. Presentation at the ATLAS’ Teams Research Incubator Weekend, Evanston, IL, USA.
Gómez-Zará, D., Ng, J., Twyman, M., Andreoli, S., DeChurch, L., Contractor, N. (2018, July). Social Cognition and Team Assembly: Competence, Warmth, or Embeddedness. Presentation at the 13th Annual INGRoup Conference, Washington D.C., MD, USA.
Gómez-Zará, D., Ng, J., Andreoli, S., DeChurch, L., Contractor, N. (2017, October). Facilitating Effective Team Assembly: Leveraging Recommender Systems to Enable Successful Multidisciplinary Research Collaborations. Poster presented at the Organizational Communication Mini Conference, Athens, Ohio, USA.
Gómez-Zará, D., & Contractor, N. (2017, August). Entorno My Dream Team (MDT). Sistemas de recomendación y análisis de redes. Presentation at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Twyman, M., Newman, D., DeChurch, L., & Contractor, N. (2016, July). The Ties that Form Teams: Self-Organization, Homophily, and Multiplexity. Paper presented at 11th Annual INGRoup Conference, Helsinki, Finland.
*Runner-up: “Best Student Paper” Award
Twyman, M., DeChurch, L. & Contractor, N. (2016, April). The Impact of Homophily and Multiplex Networks on the Assembly of Teams. Poster presented at the Sunbelt XXXVI Conference, International Network for Social Network Analysis, Newport Beach, CA.
Twyman, M., Wax, A., DeChurch, L., & Contractor, N. (2015, July). Looking for Leadership: Understanding Team Assembly in a Web Technology. In A. Wax and M. Twyman (co-chairs), Technologies for Studying and Enabling Teams. Symposium conducted at the 10th Annual INGRoup Conference, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Asencio, R., Huang, Y., DeChurch, L., Contractor, N., Sawant, A., & Murase, T. (2015, July). The MyDreamTeam Builder: A Recommender System for Assembling & Enabling Effective Teams. Poster presented at the Interdisciplinary Network Conference for Group Research (INGRoup) Annual Conference, Pittsburgh, PA.
*Best Poster Award
Twyman, M., Wax, A., DeChurch, L., & Contractor, N. (2015, June). Emergence of Assembly & Leadership Networks in Teams. Poster presented at the NetSci 2015 International School and Conference on Network Science, Zaragoza, Spain.