Teaching Team Science: The Key to Addressing 21st Century Global Challenges

To solve complex 21st-century global challenges, universities must prepare students to be competent team members. This article presents results from analysis of data collected at a university in four types of undergraduate sociology classrooms using mixed-methods, including social network analysis, student reflections, and an alumni survey. Results showed that learning is a social process. Compared with traditional lecture, fixed teams, and interacting teams, opportunistic collaboration is the most effective structure in teaching team learning through fostering communication, support, and learning networks. Post-secondary education should endorse opportunistic collaboration learning practices to prepare students for workplace success in a global economy.

Transforming Perspectives Through Virtual Exchange: A US-Egypt Partnership Part 1

With more classrooms within higher education mobilizing strategies for internationalization, collaborative online international learning (COIL), also referred to as virtual exchange, is an effective approach at offering intercultural competence through experiential learning. This strategy provides students who face barriers to international travel the opportunity to engage with students from other countries in meaningful ways, while enhancing and reinforcing course content. Grounded in the transformative learning theory, this study evaluates the effectiveness of a virtual exchange that was implemented within an undergraduate global public health course. The virtual exchange connected students from the University of Florida (within the US) with medical students in a microbiology course at Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt. Using adapted reflection prompts, we assessed the students' knowledge and learning before, during, and after the virtual exchange. This was coupled with a final paper to capture how personal backgrounds and experiences may contribute to their perception of the virtual exchange, as well as if they felt their global perspective had changed or shifted during the experience. Using directed content analysis for each of the measurements, two researchers coded the data independently to then present agreed upon salient themes to the larger group. Of the 28 randomly sampled students who participated in the virtual exchange, seven major themes emerged from the data: Connectedness; Openness; Acquisition of Knowledge and Skills; Communication; Cultural Identity; Anticipation of Options for New Roles, Relationships, and Actions; and Absence of Change. Through this evaluation it was clear there was a variance of different perspectives with many sampled students having diverse lived experiences that influenced their worldview prior to the virtual exchange. Despite course-related barriers, students acknowledged several facilitating factors that improved their intercultural competence and knowledge of course content. The integration of a virtual exchange within the classroom, with careful design and implementation, can provide a unique experience for students and an inclusive approach to learning.

Expanded Ethical Principles for Research Partnership and Transdisciplinary Natural Resource Management Science

Natural resource researchers have long recognized the value of working closely with the managers and communities who depend on, steward, and impact ecosystems. These partnerships take various forms, including co-production and transdisciplinary research approaches, which integrate multiple knowledges in the design and implementation of research objectives, questions, methods, and desired outputs or outcomes. These collaborations raise important methodological and ethical challenges, because partnering with non-scientists can have real-world risks for people and ecosystems. The social sciences and biomedical research studies offer a suite of conceptual tools that enhance the quality, ethical outcomes, and effectiveness of research partnerships. For example, the ethical guidelines and regulations for human subjects research, following the Belmont Principles, help prevent harm and promote respectful treatment of research participants. However, science-management partnerships require an expanded set of ethical concepts to better capture the challenges of working with individuals, communities, organizations, and their associated ecosystems, as partners, rather than research subjects. We draw from our experiences in collaborative teams, and build upon the existing work of natural resources, environmental health, conservation and ecology, social science, and humanities scholars, to develop an expanded framework for ethical research partnership. This includes four principles: (1) appropriate representation, (2) self-determination, (3) reciprocity, and (4) deference, and two cross-cutting themes: (1) applications to humans and non-human actors, and (2) acquiring appropriate research skills. This framework is meant to stimulate important conversations about expanding ethics training and skills for researchers in all career-stages to improve partnerships and transdisciplinary natural resources research.

An integrated model for interdisciplinary graduate education: Computation and mathematics for biological networks

The current challenges at the forefront of data-enabled science and engineering require interdisciplinary solutions. Yet most traditional doctoral programs are not structured to support successful interdisciplinary research. Here we describe the design of and students' experiences in the COMBINE (Computation and Mathematics for Biological Networks) interdisciplinary graduate program at the University of Maryland. COMBINE focuses on the development and application of network science methods to biological systems for students from three primary domains: life sciences, computational/engineering sciences, and mathematical/physical sciences. The program integrates three established models (T-shaped, pi-shaped and shield-shaped) for interdisciplinary training. The program components largely fall into three categories: (1) core coursework that provides content expertise, communication, and technical skills, (2) discipline-bridging elective courses in the two COMBINE domains that complement the student's home domain, (3) broadening activities such as workshops, symposiums, and formal peer-mentoring groups. Beyond these components, the program builds community through both formal and informal networking and social events. In addition to the interactions with other program participants, students engage with faculty in several ways beyond the conventional adviser framework, such as the requirement to select a second out-of-field advisor, listening to guest speakers, and networking with faculty through workshops. We collected data through post-program surveys, interviews and focus groups with students, alumni and faculty advisors. Overall, COMBINE students and alumni reported feeling that the program components supported their growth in the three program objectives of Network Science & Interdisciplinarity, Communication, and Career Preparation, but also recommended ways to improve the program. The value of the program can be seen not only through the student reports, but also through the students' research products in network science which include multiple publications and presentations. We believe that COMBINE offers an effective model for integrated interdisciplinary training that can be readily applied in other fields.

Learning for Transdisciplinary Leadership: Why Skilled Scholars Coming Together Is Not Enough

Transdisciplinary research is an emerging new normal for many scientists in applied research fields, including One Health, planetary health, and sustainability. However, simply bringing highly skilled students (and faculty members) together to generate real-world solutions and policy recommendations for complex problems often fails to consistently create the desired results in transdisciplinary settings. Our research goal was to improve understanding and applications of transdisciplinary learning processes within a One Health graduate education program. This qualitative study analyzes 5 years of action research data, identifying four transdisciplinary leadership skills and four conditions required for consistent skill development. Combining Vygotsky's theory of proximal development with identified transdisciplinary skills, we explain why educational scaffolding is needed to enable more successful design and delivery of transdisciplinary learning, particularly in One Health educational programs.

Epistemology for interdisciplinary research - shifting philosophical paradigms of science

In science policy, it is generally acknowledged that science-based problem-solving requires interdisciplinary research. For example, policy makers invest in funding programs such as Horizon 2020 that aim to stimulate interdisciplinary research. Yet the epistemological processes that lead to effective interdisciplinary research are poorly understood. This article aims at an epistemology for interdisciplinary research (IDR), in particular, IDR for solving 'real-world' problems. Focus is on the question why researchers experience cognitive and epistemic difficulties in conducting IDR. Based on a study of educational literature it is concluded that higher-education is missing clear ideas on the epistemology of IDR, and as a consequence, on how to teach it. It is conjectured that the lack of philosophical interest in the epistemology of IDR is due to a philosophical paradigm of science (called a physics paradigm of science), which prevents recognizing severe epistemological challenges of IDR, both in the philosophy of science as well as in science education and research. The proposed alternative philosophical paradigm (called an engineering paradigm of science) entails alternative philosophical presuppositions regarding aspects such as the aim of science, the character of knowledge, the epistemic and pragmatic criteria for accepting knowledge, and the role of technological instruments. This alternative philosophical paradigm assume the production of knowledge for epistemic functions as the aim of science, and interprets 'knowledge' (such as theories, models, laws, and concepts) as epistemic tools that must allow for conducting epistemic tasks by epistemic agents, rather than interpreting knowledge as representations that objectively represent aspects of the world independent of the way in which it was constructed. The engineering paradigm of science involves that knowledge is indelibly shaped by how it is constructed. Additionally, the way in which scientific disciplines (or fields) construct knowledge is guided by the specificities of the discipline, which can be analyzed in terms of disciplinary perspectives. This implies that knowledge and the epistemic uses of knowledge cannot be understood without at least some understanding of how the knowledge is constructed. Accordingly, scientific researchers need so-called metacognitive scaffolds to assist in analyzing and reconstructing how 'knowledge' is constructed and how different disciplines do this differently. In an engineering paradigm of science, these metacognitive scaffolds can also be interpreted as epistemic tools, but in this case as tools that guide, enable and constrain analyzing and articulating how knowledge is produced (i.e., explaining epistemological aspects of doing research). In interdisciplinary research, metacognitive scaffolds assist interdisciplinary communication aiming to analyze and articulate how the discipline constructs knowledge.