情色空间

What problem were you trying to solve when you developed this tool?

As someone who has worked with faculty at universities for many years, I have found that this is an area where many investigators stumble. They think they have an idea of how they鈥檙e going to involve their participants in their research or share their results, but it really doesn鈥檛 meet the standards of what most external funders expect these days.

They tend to go toward traditional academic dissemination methods. But the notion of high-engagement research鈥攁nd that鈥檚 a term that has taken hold鈥攊s that it鈥檚 not just about how you disseminate. It鈥檚 about who you involve, how you involve them, when you involve them, and then how you get the results back to them.

That鈥檚 something that a lot of faculty, from the most junior to the most senior, still struggle with. So this tool was designed to address that problem.

What does high-engagement research mean in practice?

Have you heard terms like patient-centered research or stakeholder-engaged research? Or lived experience? All of those fall under the rubric of high-engagement research.

The research funding community believes that in order for research to be applied and go out into the world, it has to respond to the needs of the people that it鈥檚 intended to serve.

In some cases, it鈥檚 engaging them in the formation of the research questions. They may be involved as researchers themselves. It may be about having policymakers who are, in some cases, the ultimate audience for getting something into practice. Or it may just be community members.

All of those types of engagement are high engagement in research, and they make the research stronger, more appropriate to the target audience, and more likely to be put into practice.

A lot of research traditionally is extractive. The principal investigator comes up with an idea and wants to do research and will go and find a population to do the research or a particular community without really understanding the community.

Who did you design the tool for and how does it work?

I designed it with social work and the allied professions in mind, including nursing and education. I used a Gemini notebook to create a knowledge base of respected, high-quality resources on community engaged and multi-stakeholder research as well as best practices for research-practice partnerships.. It includes scholarly papers and guidance from the the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and leading private foundations. I have vetted all of the resources in the knowledge base.

Then there is a Gem, which is a tool used to develop chatbots. The user uploads a concept paper or research proposal, and the Gem draws on the knowledge base to help principal investigators think broadly about design, implementation, and dissemination and devise specific, actionable engagement strategies with measurable outcomes, including sustainability.

The current version is a coaching tool, so the faculty member engages with it in a back-and-forth: 鈥淗ave you considered this? Why are you doing that?鈥� It can also go outside the knowledge base to find information relevant to a particular project.

Why did you design it to search the web in addition to the resources in your curated knowledge base?

Can my tool provide the level of assistance I want it to provide if I don鈥檛 allow it to search outside the knowledge base? I鈥檓 not sure that it can.

By allowing it it to go outside of the knowledge base, the tool was able to identify a policy in Uganda that is relevant to the work of Assistant Professor William Byansi, who piloted the tool.

What kind of feedback might a researcher receive?

Researchers will receive comments and general advice on their concept papers. But they can also tell the tool that they want to pitch their project to a specific funder. The tool will look at that funder鈥檚 requirements, how they think about stakeholder engagement, and then use that information to help tailor the researcher鈥檚 proposal.

Researchers can either upload a request for applications (RFA) or a request for proposals (RFP) or include a link to a funder.

Who has beta tested the tool, and how have they responded to it?

情色空间SSW faculty members Tom Byrne, William Byansi, Mar铆a Fernanda Pi帽eros-Lea帽o, and a research consultant at Boston College鈥檚 Morality Lab.聽

In the case of Byrne, it was an eye-opener for him because he does policy research, and his end audience is always policymakers.聽He started thinking about how he might involve policymakers in helping frame his questions so that the policy recommendations and the knowledge that鈥檚 produced will, in fact, be relevant and more usable to them.

He also asked it to switch gears and tailor it to NIH. And he said it gave him a really innovative idea that he was very excited about.

How did you learn to build the tool?

I took three workshops through the Center for Digital Innovation and Learning. I was given so many tools to develop it that I realized that the best way to go forward was to map it out on paper鈥攔eally thinking through context, purpose, instructions, limitations鈥攁nd then put all of that into the instructions for the tool.

The tool is still in beta. What are you working to improve, and what would you ultimately like it to become?

If I make this publicly available on, say, a website, can we have audit trails? I want to periodically look and see how people are engaging with it and check to see that it鈥檚 working properly. If it鈥檚 going off the rails, then I would need to do something about it.

I chose this particular topic area because I felt it was a need. I think it has value as an educational tool once it鈥檚 refined and further developed, and I really would like to refine it into a finished product.

What difference do you think the tool could ultimately make?

I think that it will give researchers a competitive edge. It will allow them to make certain that their project design aligns with the funders鈥� expectations, funders鈥� concepts, and funders鈥� language.

And, ultimately, their research will be more likely to be translated into action in the real world, be it a program, a policy, or an improvement in the lives of people.

This story is part of our series highlighting how students, faculty, and staff at 情色空间SSW are putting AI into practice across teaching, research, and clinical training.