Stephen Fiore (University of Central Florida)
Abstract. Science has long recognized the challenges associated with interdisciplinary research – from the tacit norms associated with the discipline bound university department to the difficulty inherent in communicating and collaborating across disciplines. Despite this fact, we have continually struggled with overcoming the challenges arising from interdisciplinary interaction. This is a particularly complex form of collaborative cognition where knowledge from varied fields needs to elicited and integrated. In this talk I first discuss interdisciplinary research in the context of team science. I focus on how to develop a science of team science that can support a broad swath of group and team researchers such that we can examine basic and applied issues of tremendous societal importance. Second, I narrow my focus to team cognition, with particular emphasis on theory developed to understand complex problem solving. I describe the macrocognition in teams framework, a multi-level model of collaboration developed to scaffold research on knowledge building and the generation of solutions to complex problems. My goal is provide macro and micro level perspectives on collaborative cognition and show how a multidisciplinary approach to theory and practice can contribute to our understanding of complex problems.
BIO: Dr. Stephen Fiore is President of the Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research and a founding Program Committee member for the annual Science of Team Science conference. He is faculty with the University of Central Florida's Cognitive Sciences Program in the Department of Philosophy and Director of the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory at UCF's Institute for Simulation and Training. He maintains a multidisciplinary research interest that incorporates aspects of the cognitive, social, organizational, and computational sciences in the investigation of learning and performance in individuals and teams. Dr. Fiore's primary area of research is the interdisciplinary study of complex collaborative problem solving and understanding how humans interact socially and with technology. Dr. Fiore has been a visiting scholar for the study of shared and extended cognition at École Normale Supérieure de Lyon in Lyon, France (2010) and he was a member of the expert panel for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which focuses on collaborative problem solving skills. As Principal Investigator and Co-Principal Investigator he has helped to secure and manage over $20 million in research funding. He is co-Editor of recent volumes on Shared Cognition (2012), Macrocognition in Teams (2008), Distributed Training (2007), Team Cognition (2004), and he has co-authored over 150 scholarly publications in the area of learning, memory, and problem solving at the individual and the group level.