PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS
Please use the following link to register for the 2026 pre-conference workshops: ingroup.net/2026Addons
MORNING WORKSHOPS:
SESSION A: Mentoring and Research Networking
Thursday, July 23, 2026
9:00am - 12:00pm
Facilitators: Anita Blanchard (University of North Carolina at Charlotte), Matt Cronin (George Mason University), Stephen Zaccaro (George Mason University)
One of the greatest strengths of INGRoup is the opportunity to build meaningful professional relationships—as mentors and mentees, collaborators, and colleagues. Facilitated by INGRoup board members, this workshop will begin with a large-group discussion focused on mentorship and professional connection within our interdisciplinary organization, followed by guided small-group networking conversations designed to foster connections before the formal conference program begins. The workshop is free to attend and but registration is required.
SESSION B: Say It in Plain Language: Communicating Teams Research Beyond Academia
Thursday, July 23, 2026
9:00am - 12:00pm
Facilitators: Tracey Rockett, M. Blair Evans, and Members of the SPOC Social Media and Knowledge Translation Team
Research on teams has enormous relevance for workplaces, sport, healthcare, education, and everyday collaboration—yet our knowledge often fails to launch outside of our own academic circles. This means that many of us ask: How can we communicate insights about teams in ways that are engaging and accessible to non-academic audiences? This workshop focuses on translating group dynamics scholarship for broader public consumption: Finding mechanisms to reliably extend our professional expertise, research findings, and theories/concepts to varied applied settings.
Participants will learn principles of effective science communication, discuss opportunities and barriers to broader engagement, and receive peer feedback on their own communication drafts. Consideration will be directed towards opportunities to disseminate and engage audiences through blogs, social media, and public scholarship outlets, as well as by engaging stakeholders directly. The workshop will combine brief instructional segments with interactive discussion and hands-on writing activities. Optional advance readings and writing exercises will be provided to support participation.
AFTERNOON WORKSHOP:
SESSION C: A Vibe Check on Team-based Accelerated Innovation: Lessons From the Hackathon Format
Thursday, July 23, 2026
1:00pm - 4:30pm
Facilitator: Nevena Ivanovic (Duke University)
Across research, education, and industry, teams are increasingly expected to generate ideas, develop prototypes, and move toward implementation under compressed time conditions. One widely adopted accelerated innovation format is the hackathon: an event in which teams develop a solution to a challenge within a few hours or days. Hackathons are often expected to support creativity and innovation through features such as protected time for focused work, access to varied expertise, rapid feedback, and opportunities for serendipitous knowledge recombination. More recently, generative AI has introduced new possibilities for accelerating several activities associated with innovation, including ideation, analysis, coding, and prototyping. The rise of “vibe coding” is one example: prompt-based code generation can speed up technical work and may make some coding-dependent activities more accessible to participants without formal programming expertise. These developments raise a broader question: how can teams accelerate innovation while still supporting creativity, learning, collaboration, and high-quality outcomes?
This workshop examines that question through a brief introduction, a live hackathon, and a collective discussion. Participants will be introduced to concepts and discussions around hackathons, team-based creativity and innovation, and generative AI in collaborative work. They will then take part in a short hackathon designed to create first-hand experience of team-based accelerated innovation. The final part of the session will include a collective reflection and debrief on accelerated innovation from multiple perspectives: as organizers designing such formats, as researchers studying hackathons and related contexts, as educators using them in the classroom, and as participants experiencing the demands of compressed teamwork.
The workshop is intended for researchers at all career stages who are interested in creativity and innovation in teams, teamwork under time pressure, generative AI in collaborative work, and hackathons as both practical formats and research settings. No preparation is required, but participants are encouraged to bring a laptop for the live hackathon portion of the workshop.
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