iGEM Ties – Mapping iGEM team interactions

Project details

The iGEM TIES project (Team IntEractions Study) is a research study conducted at the Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI) in Paris. In this project, we study how team interactions and team diversity impact the performance of iGEM teams and the learning experience of the students. How do students collaborate? How are subgroups formed? What is the frequency of interactions with mentors/PIs? How do these interactions lead to better learning (skill spreading), productivity (BioBricks produced / project size), creativity (project uniqueness) or just success in the competition (medals, prizes, winners)?

To answer these questions, we are partnering with iGEM teams to conduct a quantitative, large-scale study, using several methods:

Questionnaires

We prepared questionnaires to be filled by team members at the 3 time points during the project. They allow us to better understand the team process and diversity!

Communication metadata

The analysis of the metadata (user-timestamp) from communication networks (Slack, WhatsApp, E-mail, etc.) at the end of the project allows to better understand the communication flows within the team.

Proximity experiment

Lastly, we built a smartphone application that allows to measure interactions of team members in the lab using bluetooth signals. By using the application on certain days during the study, we can reconstruct team interaction networks in the lab!

All this data is anonymised, kept secured on a server, and participation to each data collection is completely voluntary. After the wiki freeze we provide a report summarizing some general analytics of the team (networks of interaction, number of interactions etc). This way the teams can have something to show in the presentation at Jamboree time!

If you want to be involved, it’s simple! Download the mobile application on Android or Apple app store and follow the instructions to sign-up. You can find more information about the study in the information form and in some background slides. If you have any questions, contact us by email at igem-ties@cri-paris.org! Also, if you know of other teams that would be interested, spread the word!

Team members