Idea tree: A tool for brainstorming ideas in cross-disciplinary teams

March 12, 2019March 26, 2019 Community Member Methods Author - Dan Stokols, Author - Gary Olson, Author - Judith Olson, Author - Maritza Salazar, Brainstorming, Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, Feedback, Interdisciplinarity, Metacognition, Science of team science, Synthesis, Teams, Transdisciplinarity

Community member post by Dan Stokols, Maritza Salazar, Gary M. Olson, and Judith S. Olson

How can cross-disciplinary research teams increase their capacity for generating and integrating novel research ideas and conceptual frameworks?

A key challenge faced by research teams is harnessing the intellectual synergy that can occur when individuals from different disciplines join together to create novel ideas and conceptual frameworks. Studies of creativity suggest that atypical (and often serendipitous) combinations of dissimilar perspectives can spur novel insights and advances in knowledge. Yet, many cross-disciplinary teams fail to achieve intellectual synergy because they allot insufficient effort to generating new ideas. Here we describe a brainstorming tool that can be used to generate new ideas in cross-disciplinary teams. Continue reading →

Knowledge asymmetry in interdisciplinary collaborations and how to reduce it

February 26, 2019March 12, 2019 Community Member Concepts Accountability, Author - Max Kemman, Co-production, Collaboration, Communication, Expertise, Failure, Ignorance, Interdisciplinarity, Knowledge asymmetry, Mutual learning, Negotiation, Tacit knowledge, Trust, Unintended consequences

Community member post by Max Kemman

How can tasks and goals among partners in a collaboration be effectively negotiated, especially when one party is dependent on the deliverables of another party? How does knowledge asymmetry affect such negotiations? What is knowledge asymmetry anyway and how can it be dealt with?

What is knowledge asymmetry?

My PhD research involves historians who are dependent on computational experts to develop an algorithm or user interface for historical research. They therefore needed to be aware of what the computational experts were doing. Continue reading →

Strengthening the ecosystem for effective team science: A case study from University of California, Irvine, USA

February 19, 2019March 5, 2019 Community Member Case study, Institutionalisation Author - Dan Stokols, Author - Gary Olson, Author - Judith Olson, Author - Maritza Salazar, Collaboration, Context, Culture, Higher education, Interdisciplinarity, Leverage points, Multidisciplinarity, Promotion and tenure, Research implementation, Science of team science, Systems, Teams, Transdisciplinarity

Community member post by Dan Stokols, Judith S. Olson, Maritza Salazar and Gary M. Olson

How can an ecosystem approach help in understanding and improving team science? How can this work in practice?

An Ecosystem Approach

Collaborations among scholars from different fields and their community partners are embedded in a multi-layered ecosystem ranging from micro to macro scales, and from local to more remote regions. Ecosystem levels include: Continue reading →

Metacognition as a prerequisite for interdisciplinary integration

February 5, 2019February 19, 2019 Community Member Concepts Assumptions, Author - Machiel Keestra, Cognitive biases, Collaboration, Communication, Diversity, Expertise, Groupthink, Integration, Interdisciplinarity, Mental models, Mental representations, Metacognition, Productive disagreement, Science of team science, Teams

Community member post by Machiel Keestra

What’s needed to enable the integration of concepts, theories, methods, and results across disciplines? Why is communication among experts important, but not sufficient? Interdisciplinary experts must also meta-cognize: both individually and as a team they must monitor, evaluate and regulate their cognitive processes and mental representations. Without this, expertise will function suboptimally both for individuals and teams. Metacognition is not an easy task, though, and deserves more attention in both training and collaboration processes than it usually gets. Why is metacognition so challenging and how can it be facilitated? Continue reading →

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

January 22, 2019February 5, 2019 Community Member Education Assessment, Author - Stephen Fiore, Collaboration, Communication, Complexity, Higher education, Learning, Mental models, Participation, Reflexivity, Science of team science, Teams

Community member post 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. Across these is the need to attend to the core features of teamwork as identified in the broad research literature on groups and teams. Continue reading →

Embracing tension for energy and creativity in interdisciplinary research

January 15, 2019January 29, 2019 Community Member Concepts Author - Liz Clarke, Author - Rebecca Freeth, Collaboration, Complexity, Conflict, Creativity, Diversity, Epistemology, Interdisciplinarity, Knowledge, Mutual learning, Ontology, Productive disagreement, Reflexivity, Teams

Community member post by Liz Clarke and Rebecca Freeth

Tensions inevitably arise in inter- and transdisciplinary research. Dealing with these tensions and resulting conflicts is one of the hardest things to do. We are meant to avoid or get rid of conflict and tension, right? Wrong!

Tension and conflict are not only inevitable; they can be a source of positivity, emergence, creativity and deep learning. By tension we mean the pull between the seemingly contradictory parts of a paradox, such as parts and wholes, stability and chaos, and rationality and creativity. These tensions can foster interpersonal conflict, particularly when team members treat the apparent contradictions as if only one was ‘right’. Continue reading →

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Idea tree: A tool for brainstorming ideas in cross-disciplinary teams

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Knowledge asymmetry in interdisciplinary collaborations and how to reduce it

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Strengthening the ecosystem for effective team science: A case study from University of California, Irvine, USA

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Metacognition as a prerequisite for interdisciplinary integration

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

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Embracing tension for energy and creativity in interdisciplinary research

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