Stephen Fiore – Integration and Implementation Insights

The “ABC’s” of interdisciplinarity

March 29, 2023November 10, 2020

By Stephen M. Fiore

author_stephen-fiore_2017 — Stephen M. Fiore (biography)

What are the attitudinal, behavioral, and cognitive issues that influence interdisciplinary collaborations?

The illustrations I provide here are based upon 20 years of experience working in research environments with scholars ranging from philosophers, anthropologists, and sociologists, to historians, economists, and ecologists, to psychologists, computer scientists, and neuroscientists. This experience has helped to illuminate what creates challenges during interdisciplinary interactions and what also can contribute to effective collaborations and help scholars learn from each other.

Attitudinal issues

Often times interaction is stifled when collaborators maintain some form of disciplinary disdain. The characteristics of disciplinary disdain include lack of respect or a form of contempt for another disciplinary approach, or condescension toward another discipline.

Three “must have” steps to improve education for collaborative problem solving

August 4, 2022January 22, 2019

By Stephen M. Fiore

stephen-fiore_aug-2017 — Stephen M. Fiore (biography)

Many environmental, social, and public health problems require collaborative problem solving because they are too complex for an individual to work through alone. This requires a research and technical workforce that is better prepared for collaborative problem solving. How can this be supported by educational programs from kindergarten through college? How can we ensure that the next generation of researchers and engineers are able to effectively engage in team science?

Drawing from disciplines that study cognition, collaboration, and learning, colleagues and I (Graesser et al., 2018) make three key recommendations to improve research and education with a focus on instruction, opportunities to practice, and assessment.

Creating community around the Science of Team Science

January 27, 2022August 31, 2017

By Stephen M. Fiore

How can we create new academic communities? I provide lessons from building the Science of Team Science (SciTS), a rapidly growing cross-disciplinary field of study. SciTS works to build an evidence-base and to develop translational applications to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of team-based research.

I particularly draw lessons from the recent 8^th annual conference attended by approximately 200 people. The conference aimed to:

disseminate the current state of knowledge in the SciTS field along with applications for enhancing team science;
provide opportunities to discuss future directions for advancing SciTS to improve the global scientific enterprise; and,
provide opportunities for interaction amongst a diverse group of stakeholders, including thought leaders in the SciTS field, scientists engaged in team-based research, institutional leaders who promote collaborative research, policymakers, and federal agency representatives.

Looking over the horizon for team effectiveness

September 30, 2021April 12, 2016

By Stephen M. Fiore

How can we better understand how to improve team effectiveness, as well as help society more broadly? In the last decade, there has been a great deal of growth of interdisciplinary research on teams, thanks to organizations like the Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research and the developing field of the Science of Team Science.

New areas

The study of teams has long been making important contributions to business organizations, the military, and healthcare and is now branching out to scientific research teams, cyber security teams, and even spaceflight teams. Each of these domains is of significant societal relevance for the 21st century. They represent important topics for what is called use-inspired basic science.