Proceedings of the IE 2020 International Conference www.conferenceie.ase.ro 223 MOBILISING STUDENTS TO FORWARD THINKING OF THEIR STUDIES – PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF A CROWDSOURCING EFFORT Jan W. OWSIŃSKI Polish Academy of Sciences, Warszawa, Poland Jan.Owsinski@ibspan.waw.pl Cristian CIUREA Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania cristian.ciurea@ie.ase.ro Florin Gheorghe FILIP Romanian Academy, Bucharest, Romania ffilip@acad.ro Abstract. The paper presents the initial research results, elaborated within the framework of the project “Multiparticipant cooperative decision making: consensus building vs. crowdsourcing-based decisions”, concerning the introduction to a crowdsourcing effort meant to mobilize students to forward thinking of their studies. A study was conducted by Bucharest University of Economic Studies and by Warsaw School of Information Technology under the auspices of the Polish Academy of Sciences and relevant data were collected using a questionnaire delivered to Romanian and Polish students. The results were interpreted in order to extract relevant information about expected nature of work after graduating, based on gender, nationality and university. Crowdsourcing solutions are presented in order to reveal their advantages applicable in collaborative environments. Keywords: decision-making, collaborative, crowdsourcing, multi-participant. JEL classification: Z1 - Cultural Economics, O1 - Economic Development. DOI: 10.24818/ie2020.04.08 1. Introduction This paper reports on the preliminary stage of research, oriented at gaining knowledge through a dispersed community, using web-based tools [1]. This preliminary stage involves a questionnaire-based attempt of inquiring into the opinions of university students, concerning the ways they are taught, the potential for change, and their own hypothetical participation in such a change, as well as their contribution to it. The report refers to a questionnaire-based study [2], [3], launched in March 2020 in Romania and Poland and it was accessed by around 70 people. As of the time of this writing, beginning of April 2020, only 47 responses have been obtained to a questionnaire, containing altogether as many as 61 distinct items, organized into, roughly, seven domains. Yet, the responses obtained provide already quite a variety of characteristics, first of all in terms of respondents. Thus, in particular, • 5 university-level schools are represented; • Not less than 7 directions of study are represented; • Respondents belong to 4 nationalities; • The sample contains both intramural and extramural students; • The respondents currently are at all the years of study, from 1 to 4;