Integration and Implementation Insights
A global, comprehensive, living toolkit improving research, education and impact on complex real-world problems
A Chinese version of this post is available
What are fake interdisciplinary collaborations and how do they arise?
Fake interdisciplinary collaborations are a form of performative scientific behaviour that claims to be interdisciplinary but lacks knowledge integration across disciplines. There are three social mechanisms that can result in such fake collaborations.
1. Irresponsible project management
Irresponsible project management has two manifestations:
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.
By Sondoss Elsawah and Joseph Guillaume
In part 1 of our blog posts on why use patterns, we argued for making unstated, tacit knowledge about integrated modelling practices explicit by identifying patterns, which link solutions to specific problems and their context. We emphasised the importance of differentiating the underlying concept of a pattern and a pattern artefact – the specific form in which the pattern is explicitly described.
In order to actually use patterns to communicate about practices, the artefact takes on greater importance: what form could artefacts describing the patterns take, and what mechanisms and platforms are needed to first create, and then share, maintain, and update these artefacts?
While the concepts of ‘problem, solution and context’ should be discussed in some way, there is no single best way of representing patterns as artefacts. The form of artefacts will differ depending on many factors, including how the users perceive the ease of:
By Sondoss Elsawah and Joseph Guillaume
How can modellers share the tacit knowledge that accumulates over years of practice?
In this blog post we introduce the concept of patterns and make the case for why patterns are a good candidate for transmitting the ‘know-how’ knowledge about modelling practices. We address the question of how to use patterns in a second blog post.
In broad terms, a pattern links a solution to a problem and its context. As a means of externalizing understanding of practices, the concept has been used productively in various fields, including architecture, computer science, and design science. For a more general introduction to patterns, see Scott Peckham’s blog post. While a “pattern” is ultimately a simple idea, there tends to be disagreement about a precise definition. This poses a problem for this blog post.
By Michael Paolisso
Participatory modeling has at its heart the goal of engaging and involving community stakeholders. It aims to connect academic environments and the communities we want to understand and/or help. Participatory modelling approaches include: use facilitators, provide hands-on experiences, allow open conversation, open up the modeling “black box,” look for areas of consensus, and “engage stakeholders” for their input.
One approach that has not been used to help translate and disseminate participatory models to non-modelers and non-scientists is something psychologists and anthropologists call “cultural models.” Cultural models are presupposed, taken-for-granted understandings of the world that are shared by a group of people.
Cognitive anthropologists, including those who focus on human and environment interactions, developed the theory and method of cultural modeling in order to understand the cultural knowledge and values that individuals use to “make sense,” understand, and evaluate the world around them.