Outcome spaces framework – Integration and Implementation Insights

Co-producing knowledge: Phases, issues and the td-net toolbox

April 30, 2025October 10, 2023

By Sibylle Studer and Theres Paulsen

authors_sibylle-studer_theres-paulsen — 1. Sibylle Studer (biography)
2. Theres Paulsen (biography)

What are the steps involved in co-producing knowledge in transdisciplinary research? What tools are available to help knowledge co-production and for what purpose should they be used?

Based on our experiences with the td-net (Network for Transdisciplinary Research) toolbox, we discuss how knowledge co-production can be organized along an ideal type of a transdisciplinary research process.

Phases and key issues of co-production

In developing the td-net toolbox, we used the following four phases of knowledge co-production, which require an iterative, rather than linear, approach:

A Partnership Outcome Spaces framework for transdisciplinary student-staff partnerships

May 22, 2024August 17, 2021

By Giedre Kligyte, Mieke van der Bijl-Brouwer, Jarnae Leslie, Tyler Key, Bethany Hooper and Eleanor Salazar

mosaic_authors_kligyte_van-der-bijl-brouwer_leslie_key_hooper_salazar — 1. Giedre Kligyte; 2. Mieke van der Bijl-Brouwer; 3. Jarnae Leslie; 4. Tyler Key; 5. Bethany Hooper; 6. Eleanor Salazar (biographies)

How can universities leverage students’ perspectives to create pathways towards lasting organisational change in higher education? How can we conceptualise institutional impact and outcomes of transdisciplinary student-staff partnerships?

Why student-staff partnerships?

Student-staff partnerships is an emerging approach to collaboration between students and staff members to create more egalitarian learning cultures in universities. Through partnerships, students are typically engaged in co-creating aspects of curriculum and student-facing university initiatives (such as service design), acknowledging students as having authority in their learning experience.

The Partnership Outcome Spaces framework

We adopted and extended the Transdisciplinary Outcome Spaces model described by Mitchell and colleagues (see also Mitchell et al., 2015) to develop a Partnership Outcome Spaces framework which enabled us to reconceptualise the purpose, scale and impact of process-oriented student-staff partnerships.

Designing for impact in transdisciplinary research

February 18, 2025February 16, 2017

By Cynthia Mitchell, Dena Fam and Dana Cordell

authors_cynthia-mitchell_dena-fam_dana-cordell — 1. Cynthia Mitchell (biography)
2. Dena Fam (biography)
3. Dana Cordell (biography)

Starting with richly articulated pictures of where we would like to be at some defined point in the future has powerful consequences for any human endeavour. How can we use such “Outcome Spaces” to guide the conception, design, implementation, and evaluation of transdisciplinary research?

Our Outcome Spaces Framework (Mitchell et al., 2017) considers three essential impacts:

(1) improving the situation,
(2) generating relevant stocks and flows of knowledge, and
(3) mutual and transformational learning by the researcher/s and involved participants.