Our scheduled research workshop in Austria had to be reorganised due to the restrictions of the pandemic. Therefore, we realised a full day online workshop through zoom. Prior to this the students of both our universities met online and formed inter-university groups to write a research paper over the time of one semester. After a warm up the students had the chance to fine tune their presentations. In four breakout rooms the student teams presented their research ideas. Topics ranged from gender issues in automated application processes over what inhibits people to use mobile payment or the contact tracing apps to how and if our political opinion is influenced by google prediction. Adopting our peer review approach the students were introduced to the SWOT analysis of the presentations. For each of the presentations the students had to either focus on strength, weaknesses, opportunities or threats to the research proposals and give feedback to their peers. After our well-deserved lunch break the students had time to incorporate the feedback into their proposals and draft a digital poster in miro. They then had to pitch their revised research ideas in a poster session. All participants voted on their favourite proposals and evaluated it concerning topic, potential for innovation, doability and methodology. By far the most votes went to the group that is planning to analyse how consumers are influenced by dark patterns. Congrats again!
Our research workshop ended with the award ceremony and a short feedback session. Now we’ll start researching 🙂