Long-term collaboration: Beware blaming back and blaming forward

August 21, 2018September 4, 2018 Community Member Processes Accountability, Author - Charles Lines, Collaboration, Communication, Conflict

Community member post by Charles Lines

How can conflict be minimised in long-term collaborations where there is the potential to change priorities over time?

Partners who contributed to creating a collaborative initiative or who joined it early might, quite naturally, prefer to look back at the times when they were most influential and able to shape priorities and contribute significantly to achievements in which they believed.

Also, quite naturally, those who joined a collaborative initiative later may prefer to look forwards towards new approaches and ways of doing things that might increase their influence and enable them to shape priorities and achieve things important to them. Continue reading →

Introducing interdisciplinary postgraduate degrees? Seven meta-considerations

August 7, 2018August 21, 2018 Community Member Education, Institutionalisation Author - Dena Fam, Author - Lesley Hitchens, Author - Michelle Callen, Author - Scott Kelly, Author - Tania Leimbach, Collaboration, Funding, Governance, Higher education, Integration, Interdisciplinarity

Community member post by Dena Fam, Scott Kelly, Tania Leimbach, Lesley Hitchens and Michelle Callen

dena-fam_feb-2018 — Dena Fam (biography)

What is required to plan, introduce and standardize interdisciplinary learning in higher education?

In a two-year process at the University of Technology Sydney we identified seven meta-considerations (Fam et al., 2018). These are based on a literature review of best practice of interdisciplinary programs internationally, as well as widespread consultation and engagement across the university. Each meta-consideration is illustrated by a word cloud and a key quotation from our consultations. Continue reading →

A checklist for documenting knowledge synthesis

July 31, 2018August 14, 2018 Community Member Institutionalisation, Processes Author - Gabriele Bammer, Authorisation, Best practice, Boundaries, Collaboration, Common metric, Complexity, Context, Dialogue, Integration and Implementation Sciences, Knowledge synthesis, Modelling, Problem definition, Research design, Scoping, Stakeholders, Values

Community member post by Gabriele Bammer

How do you write-up the methods section for research synthesizing knowledge from different disciplines and stakeholders to improve understanding about a complex societal or environmental problem?

In research on complex real-world problems, the methods section is often incomplete. An agreed protocol is needed to ensure systematic recording of what was undertaken. Here I use a checklist to provide a first pass at developing such a protocol specifically addressing how knowledge from a range of disciplines and stakeholders is brought together.

KNOWLEDGE SYNTHESIS CHECKLIST

1. What did the synthesis of disciplinary and stakeholder knowledge aim to achieve, which knowledge was included and how were decisions made? Continue reading →

Collaboration and team science: Top ten take aways

July 24, 2018August 28, 2018 Community Member Processes Author - Christophe Marchand, Author - L. Michelle Bennett, Best practice, Collaboration, Communication, Conflict, Emotional intelligence, Leadership, Mentoring, Networks, Productive disagreement, Promotion and tenure, Science of team science, Sharing, Teams, Trust, Vision

Community member post by L. Michelle Bennett and Christophe Marchand

What are the key lessons for building a successful collaborative team? A new version of the Collaboration and Team Science Field Guide (Bennett et al., 2018) provides ten top take aways:

1. TRUST
It is almost impossible to imagine a successful collaboration without trust. Trust provides the foundation for a team. Trust is necessary for establishing other aspects of a successful collaboration such as psychological safety, candid conversation, a positive team dynamic, and successful conflict management. Continue reading →

Institutionalising interdisciplinarity: Lessons from Latin America / Institucionalizar la interdisciplina: Lecciones desde América Latina

July 17, 2018August 13, 2018 Community Member Institutionalisation Author - Bianca Vienni Baptista (formerly Bianca Vienni), Author - Federico Vasen, Author - Juan Carlos Villa Soto, Collaboration, Funding, Higher education, Interdisciplinarity

Community member post by Bianca Vienni Baptista, Federico Vasen and Juan Carlos Villa Soto

A Spanish version of this post is available

What lessons and challenges about institutionalising interdisciplinarity can be systematized from experiences in Latin American universities?

We analyzed three organizational structures in three different countries to find common challenges and lessons learned that transcend national contexts and the particularities of individual universities. The three case studies are located in:

Universidad de Buenos Aires in Argentina. The Argentinian center (1986 – 2003) was created in a top-down manner without participation of the academic community, and its relative novelty in organizational terms was also a cause of its instability and later closure.
Universidad de la República in Uruguay. The Uruguayan case, started in 2008, shows an innovative experience in organizational terms based on a highly interactive and participatory process.
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. The Mexican initiative, which began in 1986, shows a center with a network structure in organizational terms where the focus was redefined over time.

All three centers showed an evolutionary path in which they simultaneously tried to adapt to the characteristics of the production of interdisciplinary knowledge and to the culture of the host institutions. Flexibility in this evolution seems to be a necessary condition for survival.

We found the following common lessons:

There is a bias in disciplinary-based academic assessment criteria, which does not consider the specific characteristics of interdisciplinary research and still punishes researchers who engage in collaborative research with partners outside academia. Specific criteria and assessment committees designed by interdisciplinary researchers are needed.
Interdisciplinary research requires long periods of preparation, mainly due to the collaborative dynamics, which also makes it necessary to revise assessment criteria.
Assessment committees should be made up of academic professionals specialized in interdisciplinary topics rather than a group of individuals representing different disciplines.
There is a need to explore new funding sources, especially external funds. So far, the main source of funding is still each national state.
There is also an urgency to promote academic publication to enhance the dissemination of interdisciplinary research and studies.

Continue reading →

Linking learning and research through transdisciplinary competences

July 10, 2018August 1, 2018 Community Member Education Author - BinBin Pearce, Bloom's taxonomy, Boundary object, Co-production, Collaboration, Communication, Dispositions, Framing, Higher education, Problem definition, Reflexivity, Skills, Stakeholders, Transdisciplinarity, Values

Community member post by BinBin Pearce

What are the objectives of transdisciplinary learning? What are the key competences and how do they relate to both educational goals and transdisciplinary research goals? At Transdisciplinarity Lab (TdLab), our group answered these questions by observing and reflecting upon the six courses at Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD levels that we design and teach in the Department of Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zurich, Switzerland.

Six competence fields describe what we hope students can do with the help of our courses. A competence field contains a set of interconnected learning objectives for students. We use these competence fields as the basis for curriculum design. Continue reading →

Integration and Implementation Insights

Research resources for understanding and acting on complex real-world problems

Collaboration

Long-term collaboration: Beware blaming back and blaming forward

Introducing interdisciplinary postgraduate degrees? Seven meta-considerations

A checklist for documenting knowledge synthesis

KNOWLEDGE SYNTHESIS CHECKLIST

Institutionalising interdisciplinarity: Lessons from Latin America / Institucionalizar la interdisciplina: Lecciones desde América Latina

Linking learning and research through transdisciplinary competences

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KNOWLEDGE SYNTHESIS CHECKLIST

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