Project Info
Building Online Spiritual Care Communities
Estelle Smith
estellesmith@mines.edu
Project Goals and Description:
Mental and spiritual health care seeks to assist individuals in developing resilience, finding purpose and meaning, and navigating life's challenges in a holistic and supportive manner. In light of the increasing mental and spiritual health crises in our modern world, new models of delivery for spiritual care are now necessary. For many years, the discipline of professional chaplaincy and spiritual care believed that care must be given in person. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the focus toward telehealth in medicine, prompting a re-evaluation of traditional in-person spiritual care.
The research lab of Prof. C. Estelle Smith (https://estellesmithphd.com) is seeking an excellent undergraduate researcher for a 2024 MURF project exploring how Online Spiritual Care Communities (OSCCs) can be designed to complement traditional healthcare methods. Through amplifying the impact of spiritual care professionals and enhancing patient access to care, online platforms can provide groundbreaking new solutions for delivering spiritual care. To create secure and effective OSCCs, the project examines existing support communities on the social media platform Reddit.com, and provokes ideas about what types of moderation, rules, user training, and community features would be necessary. During Spring 2024, we conducted qualitative interviews and user testing sessions on Reddit with professional chaplains and spiritual care providers. In Summer 2024, we will follow up our user studies with national surveys of the broader spiritual care community, patients, and caregivers. Based on the results of our survey, we will also begin to plan c0-design workshops.
In Fall 2024, we will conduct a series of co-design workshops with local stakeholders in which we will brainstorm and prototype design concepts for providing technology-mediated mental and spiritual care, with a focus on OSCCs. We are looking for an undergraduate researcher who wants to gain experience in human-centered design, qualitative research methodologies, and eventually implementation of software-based toolkits that can be used by moderators of future online communities. This opportunity involves first assisting our team to help with running co-design workshops to ideate on real-world societal problems in early Fall 2024. For the remainder of the academic year, we will work on analyzing the workshop data, writing publications on the results, and beginning the process of implementing technologies required to build safe and effective OSCCs. The technologies selected will depend upon the results of the workshops, however we expect to build things like: AI/ML-based algorithms and bots for online governance; interactive interfaces for training, credentialing, and supporting users; and visualization tools or online assessment strategies that can provide feedback on the status of the community and its users at any given moment.
This project is the first-of-its-kind in the world to investigate online spiritual care communities. It is a fascinating research space, both because it is completely unexplored and therefore breaking new ground, but also because the problem is exceptionally hard. People are in real need for help and healing in our troubled world. Our team derives a great deal of meaning and purpose from working toward contributing new solutions that can address loneliness, despair, and spiritual crisis.
More Information:
Grand Challenge: Advance health informatics.
bit.ly/sacredtech: This is a short position paper published in ACM Interactions which describes the personal and research narratives that led to the development of "Computational Spiritual Support."
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3449117 : This is a full-length publication at the top-tier CSCW conference which provides important context on the foundational premises of this line of research.
This project is funded by a grant from the the John Templeton Foundation, which you can learn more about here: https://www.templeton.org/grant/expanding-models-of-delivery-for-online-spiritual-care.
Primary Contacts:
Dr. Alemitu Bezabih, alemitubezabih@mines.edu | Shadi Nourriz, shadinourriz@mines.edu | Estelle Smith, estellesmith@mines.edu
Student Preparation
Qualifications
Required Qualifications
- Passion for helping people and improving mental and spiritual healthcare
- Strong interest in Technology Design, UI/UX, Human-Computer Interaction, Social Computing
- Currently enrolled as an undergraduate student, preferably in Engineering, Design and Society; Computer Science; Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences; or related area
- Excellent project management skills, attention to detail, and interpersonal sensitivity
- Self-motivated and able to work independently, as well as to work collaboratively in a team environment
- Prior experience as a Reddit user (or other social media such as Facebook, X/Twitter, Instagram, etc.)
- Prior training in design-related coursework, such as Human-Centered Design
- Prior exposure to research ethics/CITI training and/or qualitative research methods, such as Grounded Theory Method or Thematic Analysis
- Experience in co-design methodologies, workshop facilitation techniques or leadership activities where you were confident being in the centerstage and guiding any type of event to completion (e.g., theater club director, hackathon organizer, etc.)
- Willingness to independently learn coding skills needed to assist with building prototype technologies
TIME COMMITMENT (HRS/WK)
5
SKILLS/TECHNIQUES GAINED
- Design and execution of human subjects research studies
- Scientific teamwork, writing and publication
- Community-engaged research skills, project management, and communication
- Implementation of software based on community-derived requirements
MENTORING PLAN
As a valued member of our interdisciplinary research group, you will be embedded in the only Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research lab at Mines. Throughout your work, you will be mentored by a research team consisting of Prof. Estelle Smith, Postdoctoral Researcher Dr. Alemitu Bezabih, and PhD student Shadi Nourriz in CS@Mines. You will be invited to attend regular lab meetings as well as research-specific weekly team meetings, where you will have opportunities to check-in on your progress from the last week, while receiving guidance and new assignments for the next week. Prof. Estelle Smith will also be available for 1:1 meetings, definitely including a meeting at the start of both Fall 24 and Spring 25 semesters, in addition to more meetings as needed. Our hope is that our undergraduate MURF researcher will earn co-authorships on anywhere from 1-3 publications, thereby setting them up to be competitive for graduate school applications or industry positions in HCI following graduation.
Preferred Student Status
Junior
Senior