Week 3: Begining Exploratory Research
Carnegie Mellon University
Graduate Interaction Design Studio 2
Spring 2018
Kicking Off Phase 02
While meeting with Peter and Bruce on Monday to discuss our updated direction, we touched upon potential interview subjects that could help push our exploratory research forward. Ideally these conversations would be directed towards addressing questions of:
- What are potential opportunities for AI within education?
- What is the the value of soft skills in the future?
- What are the current methods for teaching / learning soft skills?
In addition to these initial interviews, we as a group have to begun to consider what other exploratory research methods would be valuable to dive deeper into this week, so in addition to these conversations we will be doing some secondary research, distributing a survey, and doing competitive analysis.
Exploratory Research
Interviews
We began the exploratory research phase by conducting three interviews with subject matter experts including Judy Mills of the CMU Eberly Center, Stuart Candy of the CMU School of Design, and Jill Chisnell of the CMU Library. These conversations have helped push our thinking of this subject further and we have begun to schedule several more in the coming weeks. To summarize some of the key insights from these conversations:
Judy Mills. CMU Eberly Center
- Define Goals put into scenario
- Stududent at com college in change states
- Dispursed resources in CCAC vs CMU
Stuart Candy. CMU School of Design
- Our near term timeline may be too conservative.
- We should look into the past to understand how to look at the future.
- How can we determine how durable trends are, i.e. will gamification still be relevant in the future.
- We need to identify our assumptions about the future that we are designing for.
Jill Chisnell. CMU Libraries
- Insight 01
- Insight 02
Secondary Research
In addition to expert interviews we have begun to conduct secondary research into the soft skills teaching and learning methods as well as opportunities for AI and education. In our conversations with Peter, Bruce and our interviewees several book titles and potential areas / channels to focus our research have surfaced. Over the course of the exploratory research phase we intend to dive deeper into the following resources:
Books
- Charles Duhigg- “Smarter Faster Better”
- Adam Grant- “The Originals”
- Eberly Center- “How Learning Works”
- “Educational Games for Soft-Skills Training in Digital Environments”
Papers
- “Effective Integration of Technology and Instructor- Led Training to Promote Soft Skills Mastery”
- Adecco Group- “The Soft Skills Imperative”
- Coming Soon
Articles
Videos
- Lynda Course “Mastering in Demand Soft Skills”
Databases
- Simulated Learning Environments Lecture Notes (Comp Sci)
- Emerald Management and Research
- Pro-quest Education
- Education Resources Information Center
Survey
In order to gain a further understanding of how others define “soft skills” and their value we distributed a the following survey. Building off of the US department of Labor’s break down of soft skills, we asked respondents to evaluate and define emotional intelligence, creativity, curiosity, resilience, creativity and adaptability. We intend on reviewing the initial results of this exercise early next week.
Competitive Analysis:
In addition we have started to conduct competitive analysis to gain a better understanding of how others have begun to address soft skills education. After an initial search we have uncovered Grovo, Butterfly.ai, and Lynda as companies working within this field that may be worth investigating further.
Next Steps
In the coming week we have interviews scheduled with Anita Wooley of the Tepper School of Business, Carolyn Rose of CMU School of Computer Science, and Marc Rettig of FIT Associates. However due to the quick timeline of the exploratory research phase we will need to begin synthesizing our findings in preparation for our presentation on February 14th.
Other potential interviewees:
- Marti Louw- CMU HCI + Ideate
