Knowledge Integration faculty and students have developed several resources for instructors, researchers, students, employers, and the general public to use in their work on collaboration and interdisciplinary studies
Collaboration & Teamwork Resources
We have created and gathered several resources for teaching effective collaboration and teamwork.
Many of these documents were created either as part of one of the Knowledge Integration courses – INTEG 210: Making Collaboration Work (which is open to all 2A+ students at Waterloo) and INTEG 410: Interdisciplinary Collaboration – or through UW’s Collaboration & Teamwork Community of Practice, co-led by Katie Plaisance and Scott Anderson.
- Describes best practices for group work.
- Describes team dynamics, stages of team-building.
- Provides tools for effective group work and meetings (roles, having an agenda, etc.).
- Offers a framework to employ when designing group work in courses.
- Provides points to consider and guiding questions.
- We used this handout as a tool to facilitate discussion during a workshop.
- Outlines, in depth, the description and purpose of a group charter.
- Offers guidelines for building a team charter.
- Techniques and best practices for brainstorming in teams.
- Outlines best practices for giving/receiving feedback
- Sample handout for students to give feedback to peers.
- Defines mono-, multi-,inter-, and trans-disciplinarity.
- Offers examples of each one, along with further resources.
- Best practices from Katie Plaisance's Making Collaboration Work course.
- Collective wisdom of the F19 INTEG 210 class.
- Collated takeaways/themes from Katie Plaisance's Making Collaboration Work course.
- Describes the benefits of learning how to collaborate.
- Offers resources for further learning.
- Outlines documents/webpages (hyperlinked) with corresponding descriptions.
- Resources come from the CTE at UW (and beyond), and are categorized as follows: Working in a Group, Instructor Tools, Group Contracts, and Conflict Resolution.
Interdisciplinary Education Resources
We have created and gathered several resources for teaching effective collaboration and teamwork. Some of these documents were created as part of one of the Knowledge Integration courses, INTEG 410: Interdisciplinary Collaboration (formerly INTEG 475), taught by Katie Plaisance.
- Defines mono-, multi-,inter-, and trans-disciplinarity (MMIT).
- Offers examples of each one, along with further resources.
Compendium of Interdisciplinarity
- Website created by students in INTEG 475: Interdisciplinary Collaboration (now INTEG 410).
- Includes definitions of key terms such as multi, inter, and transdisciplinarity; interactional expertise; and various patterns of collaboration.
Fruits, Salads, and Smoothies: A Working Definition of Interdisciplinarity
- Overview of four interdisciplinary realms: interdisciplinary knowledge, interdisciplinary research, interdisciplinary education, & interdisciplinary theory
- Criteria for ranking interdisciplinary richness
Suggested readings
- Boix Mansilla, Veronica (2005). “Assessing Student Work at Disciplinary Crossroads.” Change, pp. 14–21.
- Eigenbrode et al. (2007). “Employing Philosophical Dialogue in Collaborative Science.” Bioscience, 57: 55-64.
- Epstein, Susan L. (2014). “Making Interdisciplinary Collaboration Work.”In Interdisciplinary Collaboration: An Emerging Cognitive Science, Derry et al. (Eds.), Psychology Press.
- Klein, Julie Thompson (2005). Interdisciplinary Teamwork: The Dynamics of Collaboration and Integration. Psychology Press.
- Leavy, Patricia (2012). “Evaluation Strategies and the Future of Transdisciplinarity.” Essentials of Transdisciplinary Research: Using Problem-Centered Methodologies, Left Coast Press.
- Leavy, Patricia (2012). “Transdisciplinarity: Disciplinary to Transdisciplinary Knowledge-Building.” Essentials of Transdisciplinary Research: Using Problem-Centered Methodologies, Left Coast Press.
- Miller et al. (2008), “Epistemological Pluralism: Reorganizing Interdisciplinary Research.” Ecology and Society, 13: 46.
- Nissani, Moti (1995). “Fruits, Salads, and Smoothies: A Working Definition of Interdisciplinarity.” Journal of Educational Thought, 29: 119-126. http://www.is.wayne.edu/MNISSANI/PAGEPUB/SMOOTHIE.htm.
- Repko, Allen. “Defining Interdisciplinary Studies.” In Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies, Repko et al. (Eds.), Sage Publishing, 2008.