**5. Conclusions**

COVID-19 has challenged society's social abilities. With society's new constraints, academic research had to adapt in order to make progress. Social science research, specifically stakeholder engagement, was one such area that met many limitations during the pandemic. The deliberative multicriteria evaluation process builds upon a methodology in which human interaction is essential to the outcomes of the process. Here, we discussed how we were able to modify the DMCE methodology so that the experiment could still take place during a COVID-19 era with no in-person interaction allowed. To do so, we built upon the principles of the DMCE methodology and transferred it online using resources that were publicly available, free, and already used by the participants. While modifications to length (5 to 3 h) and order (participants were asked to watch expert videos before their participation date) of the workshop were necessary, most other elements of the methodology remained the same for the online format. The main element that was lacking was the in-person interactions. However, with video conferencing tools available, this element was not completely lost. In agreemen<sup>t</sup> with the findings of Liu et al., our research highlighted the use and easy deployment of education technology to expand traditional social science research and engage with a more diverse (in terms of relationship to oysters and microplastics in Massachusetts) audience [28].

Society, including the research community, may interact very differently in a post-COVID-19 world. This paper highlights how stakeholder engagemen<sup>t</sup> can still occur in this new virtual reality. Future research can explore how to improve and encourage the discourse between participants using video conferencing tools (e.g., through the use of breakout rooms, better facilitation techniques). While keeping costs low was an aim of this research, exploring other platforms that are not free may strengthen the outcomes of the workshops as those platforms may have better tools to engage with and between participants.

**Author Contributions:** Conception and design: C.T., G.M., J.U.-R. acquisition of data: C.T., G.M., J.U.-R. and interpretation of data: C.T., G.M. Drafted and/or revised the article: C.T., G.M., J.U.-R. Approved the submitted version for publication: C.T., G.M., J.U.-R. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This work is supported the National Science Foundation IGERT: Coasts and Communities—Natural and Human Systems in Urbanizing Environments Program NSF DGE 1249946.

**Acknowledgments:** The stakeholder workshops were approved by the University of Boston IRB # 2020013. We thank Juanita Urban-Rich, Evan J. Ward, and Abigail Barrows for serving as experts, Jennifer Bender for serving as the facilitator, and all of the stakeholders who participated.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
