By Sebastian Rogga and Anton Parisi
2. Anton Parisi (biography)
How can members of interdisciplinary teams quickly gain a better understanding of each other’s thematic preferences and skills in a way that is also engaging and fun?
We have developed a “keyword quiz” icebreaker method to facilitate exchange between members of interdisciplinary teams, especially between people who are not complete strangers to each other but are collaborating in a project context for the first time.
In brief, the idea is to communicate each member’s scientific profile based on keywords from publications that the team members have published and that they have selected based on specific categories.
The keywords of a publication are presented visually to the whole group and the team members then guess, in the form of a quiz, which team member published the associated publication.
After the author has been revealed, they share the reasons for choosing the publication. Such storytelling creates a better understanding of the team member’s interests, methodological approaches and publication habits.
Preparation
- First, a “quizmaster” (moderator) is appointed. They email all team members asking them to send (to the moderator only) publications on specific categories in which the team members are lead author or co-author. The categories should be appropriate for the occasion of the meeting, eg.
- My first scientific publication
- My most successful publication
- My worst experience as (co-)author in a publication process
- My publication that best fits the topic of the project
- My publication that best represents my methodological skillset
- My “exotic outlier” paper.
- Team members are free to submit one or more publications for each category, or to submit a paper from outside the categories. Early-career researchers will usually have few publications and should be invited to present coursework or theses.
- The quizmaster selects a mix of publications (up to 20) and prepares a digital slide show. For each selected publication the keywords are presented, followed by a screenshot of the first page on which the title of the publication and the author(s) are visible. See the examples presented below.
- Where a selected work does not have keywords, either the participant or quizmaster identifies some terms or phrases to present as “keywords.”
- The quizmaster may include their own publications, but does not participate in the guessing.
The quiz meeting
- For face-to-face meetings, a projector and a half-circle of chairs are set up so that all team members have a good view of the image projection and each other. For digital meetings, screen share is used to share the slides along with the comment function of the meeting software.
- The quizmaster shows the first slide, which initially only shows the keywords from a publication (see the image below). Meanwhile, the team members give their guesses (the still-secret author of the publication plays along). There are various ways this can be conducted eg., asking team members to write down their guesses and present them when called on by the quizmaster.
- The quizmaster then calls on the author. At the same time, the first page of the publication is made visible to everyone (see image below). Then, the author tells the team why they chose the publication and to which category (or categories) the publication fits (eg., “This is my most successful paper because…”). Team members are also invited to ask follow-up questions and thus get to know each other’s work better.
- After working through all the keywords and publications, the quizmaster can end the icebreaking session or lead an open discussion about main topics, methodological gaps, etc., that exist in the team.
When should the method not be applied?
The method should not be used if the team members have never met or barely know each other. It will also not work if the team members have already co-authored many publications.
The method should not serve as a platform for self-promotion. If there is a danger of “profiling battles,” the categories need to be chosen wisely by the quizmaster.
Ideally the team will be between 4 and 20 people.
Further notes and possible variations
Each round of guessing with a brief presentation and discussion with the author takes about 3-5 minutes for each paper. In total, the whole session should not last longer than 90 minutes.
To stimulate the gamification aspect, the correct guesses of each player can be rewarded with points, so that a “quiz winner” can be named at the end.
The keywords do not all have to be visible immediately, but can also become visible gradually. This stimulates reflection on the appropriate authors.
In principle, other text components of publications are also suitable for the quiz, such as keywords from titles or striking sentences from the publications. Keywords extracted from non-scientific texts are also conceivable and this opens a window for applying the method in transdisciplinary teams that work with non-academics (assuming their work produces text-based artefacts).
Concluding questions
Can you see how a method like this could be helpful in your team? Are there other variations that you would suggest? Are there other useful icebreaker methods that you have used in interdisciplinary or diverse teams?
Biography: Sebastian Rogga MA is a project manager at the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) in Müncheberg, Germany. His interests are in transformative science, team science and science-society interfaces.