13 september 2023
Interdisciplinary collaboration (animation)
Animation 1: interdisciplinary collaboration In this animation This animation aims to make students who are going to work together interdisciplinarily aware of how this is different from collaboration within a single discipline. It involves different characteristics and challenges. We discuss the four most important ones: Complexity Diversity Dependence Creativity Use in class This animation can be used to start the thinking process on how the student teams in the relevant subject can best deal with this. As a teacher, you can ask questions that can help teams get off to a good start: How can we tackle the above challenges? What agreements are needed for this? The animation can also be used (again) at the end of a collaboration process to initiate reflection on the collaboration. Which characteristics emerged clearly in the teams and which challenges did they face? How did they tackle/resolve them? Animation 2: team dynamics: emergent states In this animation This animation is about a special element of collaboration, namely emergent states - what emerges between team members in a collaborative process. Probably every student has already experienced emergent states, but does not know that it is an actual concept. Making this explicit can help students think about this and discuss it with each other. Use in class As a teacher, you can encourage students to explore what is needed for them to get into a positive emergent state. Then the different needs of the team members can be discussed and agreements can be made on how the team wants to work together. Hopefully, this will increase collaborative enjoyment and success. This animation fits well with the animation on interdisciplinary collaboration because the characteristics and challenges discussed there can influence emergent states. As a teacher, you can have students reflect on this interaction. You can also make a link between the experiences of interdisciplinary collaboration and how collaboration might take place in the future workplace. Are the characteristics and challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration also present there, and what effects do emergent states have there? These videos are based on Roosmarijn van Woerden’s PhD research into interdisciplinary collaboration. It was made by Koen de Graaf and commissioned by the Interdisciplinary Education Programme.