braintrust interdisciplinary knowledge lab

INTERDISCIPLINARYPROBLEM-SOLVINGFOR STUDENTSMethodologies, experiences and results from Braintrust’s ‘Interdisciplinary Knowledge Lab’

WWW.BRAINTRUSTBASE.COM

About this publication

In this e-book, we have put together the methodologies, experiences, and results from the student conference ‘Braintrust LIVE #1: Interdisciplinary Knowledge Lab’, which took place on April 23rd 2013 at the University of Copenhagen. At the conference, 24 students from twelve different countries and 16 different academic disciplines, came together to develop interdisciplinary problem-solving models to address some of the grand challenges of our time. The conference was arranged by the academic think tank Braintrust, and had as its aim to give students hands-on experience in working in a team with people from disciplines different to their own.

In the end of the conference, the teams presented their models at an informal reception with guests from press, business and academia. After the event, the models were evaluated by experts in interdisciplinarity and within the fields that the students had dealt with.

We hope with this book to inspire readers by the efforts of conference participants and organisers, and to contribute to the organisation of more interdisciplinary student activities in the future.

Do you want to know more or host a conference in collaboration with Braintrust? Go to braintrustbase.com or contact us at [email protected]

2

dis·ci·pline

A field of study, a branch of learning, or scholarly instruction. Different disciplines may share a common ethos, such as a respect for knowledge and intellectual inquiry, but differences between them are vast.

Disciplines often have their own approaches to understanding and investigating new knowledge, ways of working, and perspectives on the world around them, and disciplinary worlds are therefore in many ways separate and distinct cultures.

noun \’di-sə-plən\

Main categories of academic disciplines:

The Natural Sciences (such as Biology, Geology, Chemistry and Physics).

The Social Sciences (such as Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology and Social Economy).

The Humanities (such as History, Languages, Literature and Gender Studies).

The Applied and Professional Fields (such as Medicine, Law, Management and Journalism).

3

Braintrust is an academic think tank, whose primary purpose is to create a free environment for knowledge sharing among students. On the one hand, the organisation pools the academic resources of students in a single, common, web-based portal, thus giving students an overview of their own competencies while connecting them across disciplines. On the other hand, Braintrust aims to facilitate, make fluid, and advance interdisciplinary cooperation in practice.

One of Braintrust’s goals is to turn the all-too-common phenomenon of academic memory-loss among students into awareness and self-confidence in academic skills and competencies. By doing this, Braintrust hopes to help students, and society at large, benefit from the enormous amounts of information that they have, but rarely share with one another.

A lot of students are not aware of how their discipline can or does contribute to a specific real-life problem. It is part of Braintrust’s mission to make students

aware of which academic tools they have at their disposal, how they can use them, and – not least –how they can combine them with other disciplines’ tools.

“Students from different disciplines or different universities have more in common than they might think.”

Sigrid Bjerre Andersen, Braintrust.

Braintrust: Creating an Interdisciplinary Platform

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Akademisk CV

AKADEMISKE KOMPETENCER

SØGNING

RELATEREDE PROFILER

PUBLIKATIONER

Daniel Dittlau Pedersen

Bente Clausen

International Development

Roskilde Universitet (RUC)

Design of Apparatus for Quantitative

Measurement of Velocity dependent Muscle

Stiffness Daniel Dittlau Pedersen (2011)

Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (DTU)

Indeholder lidt information om gyroskoper, accelerometre og

kraftsensorer, samt interface med hhv. microcontroller og

MatLab.

Design of a Balancing Biped Robot

Daniel Dittlau Pedersen (2012)

Robotteknologi


In this report the design of a biped robot, and a method for

actively balancing it will be introduced. This method is based

on controlling the center of pressure under the balancing

foot. Some tests are completed to show the effectiveness of

a simple feedback controller on this design. Finally a method

of harvesting data using Matlab is...

Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring

Daniel Dittlau Pedersen (2013)

ElektronikDanmarks Tekniske Universitet (DTU)

In this project two microcontroller boards are used two

facilitate non-intrusive load monitoring. The first board

featuring an AVR Atmega microcontroller and a CS5463 chip

is used to measure power characteristics and send these to

the second board. This second board features an arm

microcontroller which takes care of the actual monitoring of

the...

Bo Sundgaard

FilosofiAalborg Univeristy (AAL)

Søren Lau Hermansen

Europæisk Etnologi

Syddansk Universitet (SDU)

Samuel Lancaster Jakobsen

SociologiKøbenhavens (KU)

Patric Moeller

Service Management

Copenhagen Business School (CBS)

Susanne Christensen

ØkonomiRoskilde Universitet (RUC)

Anders Olsen

FilosofiAarhus Universitet (AU)

Lea Møller Strandgaard

Global Business Informatics

IT-Universitetet (ITU)

Christina Kronborg Schmidt

ØkonomiDanmarks Pædagogiske Universitet (DPU)

Cathrine Kjær Christensen

Engelsk og Kommunikation

Aalborg Universitet (AAU)

Therese Jensen

ØkonomiKøbenhavens (KU)

Youssef Bakiz

Kunsthistorie

Aarhus Universitet Herning (AUHE)

Miriam Helena Wistreich

Digital design og kommunikation

Københavens (KU)

Carina Cappelen


Søren Møller


ProjektpartnerKonsulentPraktikant Studentermedhjælper

FuldtidsansatFrivillig

VidenpilotPh.D.ForedragsholderKorrekturlæserMentorSpecialemakker Læsegruppe

Karriere

StudieSparringspartner

KONTAKT MIG, HVIS DU SØGER EN:

SEND BESKED

TITEL Civilingeniør - Elektroteknologi (2013)

UNIVERSITET


FAGLIGHED

ElektronikUDDANNELSER

Diplomingeniør - Elektroingeniør, Danmarks Tekniske Universitet

(DTU), 2006-2011

Daniel Dittlau Pedersen

Elektronik, Robotter, Industrirobotter, Reguleringsteknik, Machine

Vision, FPGA

VIDENSOMRÅDERTEORI OG METODE

C, C++, Matlab, Labview, VHDL

KOMPETENCER

Programmering, Research, Engineering

SKRIVER SPECIALE

BESKEDER

MIN PROFIL

MIN BASE

OPRETPUBLIKATION

SØG

BACHELOR

SEMESTER 10

BRAINTRUSTFORSIDE

OMBRAINTRUSTABOUT

(ENGLISH)

SØG

Akademisk CV


SØGNING

RELATEREDE PROFILER

PUBLIKATIONER

Katrine Danielle Bjaarnø

Bente Clausen



Anthropology of the Global Economy

Lars Salomonsson Christensen (2009)

Socialantropologi

Stockholm Universitet (SE)Specialet undersøger brugen af poetry slam i

danskundervisning med udgangspunkt i empirisk materiale

hentet fra et undervisningsforløb med 9. 10. klasser. Med

afsæt i en analyse af de to "kunstner-pædagoger", som

varetog undervisningen, og dens didaktiske struktur,

redkaber og forcer, diskuteres det, hvordan poetry slam

formen kan ses lægge op...

Halmtorvet: A place of emotions?

En narrativ psykologisk analyse af Jonathan

Lars Salomonsson Christensen (2009)

Socialantropologi

Stockholm Universitet (SE) Med udgangspunkt i en narrativ psykologisk analyse af

Jonathan Safran Foers roman Everything is Illuminated

(2002) undersøgte jeg, hvordan det at fortælle og have en at

fortælle til kan være givende i traumatiske situationer og

udviklende for identiteten. Herunder undersøgte jeg ...

In all sovereignty?

An inquiry into the essential elements

of the Cotonou Agreement

Katrine Danielle Bjaarnø (2010)

Offentlig Administration

Roskilde Universitet (RUC)In the Cotonou Agreement between the EU and the ACP

countries, it is established, on the one hand, that the ACP

countries shall plan their own development strategies in all

sovereignty, while on the other, this shall be done in due

regard of the three essential elements of human rights,

democratic principles, and the rule of law. This is the...

The role of the state in current

development discourse

Increased confidence or increased skepticism?


Development Studies

Lunds Universitet (SE)

There has within recent years been an increasing tendency

to focus on the state as the key provider of ‘development’ in

the Third World. This tendency is seen in an increased

responsibility given to developing country governments from

their Western donors, where budget support and long-term

planning has seen a revival, and an increased focus on...

Bo Sundgaard



Europæisk Etnologi




Patric Moeller

Service Management


Susanne Christensen


Anders Olsen










Therese Jensen


Youssef Bakiz

Kunsthistorie




Københavens (KU)

Carina Cappelen


Søren Møller


ProjektpartnerKonsulent

Studentermedhjælper

Fuldtidsansat

VidenpilotPh.D.

KorrekturlæserMentorSpecialemakker Læsegruppe

Karriere



SEND BESKED

TITEL Civilingeniør - Elektroteknologi (2013)

UNIVERSITET


FAGLIGHED

ElektronikUDDANNELSER

Diplomingeniør - Elektroingeniør,

Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (DTU), 2006-2011

Lars Salomonsson Christensen

Politik, Administration, Beslutningsprocesser, Forhandling,

Partnerskab, Den danske model, Arbejdsmarkedspolitik, EU,

EU's regionalfonde, Udviklingslande, Cotonou-aftalen, Nigeria,

Liberia, Zambia, International Politik, Menneskerettigheder,

Politisk filosofi, Internationale Organisationer, Udenrigspolitik,

Konflikt, Civilsamfund, Naturressourcer, Olie

VIDENSOMRÅDER

TEORI OG METODE

Diskursteori, Post-strukturalisme, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler,

Chantal Mouffe, Alain Badiou, Ernesto Laclau, Michael Ignatieff,

Samfundsvidenskabelig videnskabsteori, Interpellation,

Universalisme

KOMPETENCER

Research, Analyse, Kvalitativ dataindsamling- og behandling,

Kommunikation, Procesfacilitering, Logistik, Feltarbejde, Fransk,

Engelsk, Webkommunikation, Konsulentarbejde

BESKEDER

MIN PROFIL

MIN BASE

OPRETPUBLIKATION

SØG

BACHELOR

BRAINTRUSTFORSIDE

OMBRAINTRUSTABOUT

(ENGLISH)

Akademisk CV


SØGNING

RELATEREDE PROFILER

PUBLIKATIONER

Katrine Danielle Bjaarnø

Bente Clausen



Skoleslam og digtdiskurser

En didaktisk analyse af poetry slam som

redskab til skærpelsen af sproglig...

Ida Marie Fich (2010)

Cand.mag i Litteraturvidenskab Specialet undersøger brugen af poetry slam i danskunder-

visning med udgangspunkt i empirisk materiale hentet fra et

undervisningsforløb med 9. 10. klasser. Med afsæt i en

analyse af de to "kunstner-pædagoger", som varetog under-

visningen, og dens didaktiske struktur, redkaber og forcer,

diskuteres det, hvordan poetry slam formen kan ses lægge

op...

Jeg fortæller mig

En narrativ psykologisk analyse af Jonathan

Safran Foers Everything is...

Ida Marie Fich (2010)

Med udgangspunkt i en narrativ psykologisk analyse af

Jonathan Safran Foers roman Everything is Illuminated

(2002) undersøgte jeg, hvordan det at fortælle og have en at

fortælle til kan være givende i traumatiske situationer og

udviklende for identiteten. Herunder undersøgte jeg ...

In all sovereignty?

An inquiry into the essential elements

of the Cotonou Agreement


Offentlig Administration

Roskilde Universitet (RUC)In the Cotonou Agreement between the EU and the ACP

countries, it is established, on the one hand, that the ACP

countries shall plan their own development strategies in all

sovereignty, while on the other, this shall be done in due

regard of the three essential elements of human rights,

democratic principles, and the rule of law. This is the...

The role of the state in current

development discourse

Increased confidence or increased skepticism?


Development Studies

Lunds Universitet (SE)

There has within recent years been an increasing tendency

to focus on the state as the key provider of ‘development’ in

the Third World. This tendency is seen in an increased

responsibility given to developing country governments from

their Western donors, where budget support and long-term

planning has seen a revival, and an increased focus on...

Bo Sundgaard



Europæisk Etnologi




Patric Moeller

Service Management


Susanne Christensen


Anders Olsen










Therese Jensen


Youssef Bakiz

Kunsthistorie




Københavens (KU)

Carina Cappelen


Søren Møller


ProjektpartnerKonsulent

Studentermedhjælper

Fuldtidsansat

VidenpilotPh.D.

KorrekturlæserMentorSpecialemakker Læsegruppe

Karriere



SEND BESKED

TITEL Cand.mag i Litteraturvidenskab (2010)

UNIVERSITET

Københavns Universitet (KU)

FAGLIGHED

Cand.mag i Litteraturvidenskab

UDDANNELSER

Teatervidenskab, Københavns Universitet (KU), 2005-2007

Engelsk, Københavns Universitet (KU), 2003-2005

Ida Marie Fich

Politik, Administration, Beslutningsprocesser, Forhandling,

Partnerskab, Den danske model, Arbejdsmarkedspolitik, EU,

EU's regionalfonde, Udviklingslande, Cotonou-aftalen, Nigeria,

Liberia, Zambia, International Politik, Menneskerettigheder,

Politisk filosofi, Internationale Organisationer, Udenrigspolitik,

Konflikt, Civilsamfund, Naturressourcer, Olie

VIDENSOMRÅDER

TEORI OG METODE

Diskursteori, Post-strukturalisme, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler,

Chantal Mouffe, Alain Badiou, Ernesto Laclau, Michael Ignatieff,

Samfundsvidenskabelig videnskabsteori, Interpellation, Universal-

isme

KOMPETENCER

Research, Analyse, Kvalitativ dataindsamling- og behandling,

Kommunikation, Procesfacilitering, Logistik, Feltarbejde, Fransk,

Engelsk, Webkommunikation, Konsulentarbejde

KANDIDAT

BESKEDER

MIN PROFIL

MIN BASE

OPRETPUBLIKATION

SØG

BACHELOR

BRAINTRUSTFORSIDE

OMBRAINTRUSTABOUT

(ENGLISH)

In the new innovation strategy (...) there is a lot of focus on education as an important element. But it’s kind of a neglected link: we haven’t succeeded in connecting innovation with education. Braintrust is a really good example of trying to do that. We have a goal of making students innovation-resources, and therefore it is very relevant to see what comes out of putting students from different countries together to solve some of these grand challenges.

“

”Jesper Risom, Department of Education, working with innovation strategies, Expert Evaluator at the Interdisciplinary Knowledge Lab #1.

5

In 2002, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics to psychologist and researcher Daniel Kahneman. The prize was given to him for applying findings from cognitive psychology to the field of behavioural economics. These findings showed that, contrary to what economists traditionally had assumed, people systematically make decisions in non-rational ways under conditions of risk.

Applying this simple, but consistent finding from psychology to the field of economy has, in the long run, probably saved societies, businesses and people vast amounts of money, time and energy, as well as saving all future generations of economists from scratching their heads, wondering why their scenarios for economic development consistently turn out slightly off the mark.

Kahneman and his close colleague Amos Tversky published an article on their theory, called “Prospect Theory,” in Econometrica, arguably the most prestigious economic journal, where it remains the most cited article to date.

“His work has inspired a new generation of researchers in economics and finance to enrich economic theory using insights from cognitive psychology into intrinsic human motivation.”

― The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ announcement of psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s Nobel Prize in Economics.

Interdisciplinarity: Why Bother?

6

Psychologist Daniel Kahneman,winner of 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics

The real-world research problems that scientists address rarely arise within orderly disciplinary categories, and neither do their solutions.

“

”– Carole L. Palmer (Work at the Boundaries of Science: Information and the

Interdisciplinary Research Process, 2001, p. vii).

7

Interdisciplinarity means integrating knowledge and modes of thinking drawn from two or more disciplines to produce a cognitive advancement –such as explaining a phenomenon, solving a problem, creating a product or raising a new question – in ways that would have been unlikely through single- disciplinary means.

Because single disciplines specialize in the study of one aspect of the social or natural world, they can attain an extensive knowledge of that aspect. They can rarely, however, describe the full complexity of problems in the “real world.” In real life, taking the full complexity of a problem into account is often necessary to ensure that a solution to that problem will succeed.

Since the beginning of scientific inquiry into the workings of the universe, areas of investigation have been categorized and specialized by theme or focus. This specialization has allowed for the detailed and in-depth investigation of a multitude of areas and

great scientific advancements. However, it has not ensured a “connecting of the dots” between the areas of knowledge, which has rather, historically, been left to polymaths who have had the time, opportunity, and mental faculties to master several disciplines and integrate their insights.

By now, we have to go several centuries back to find the “last man who knew everything,” namely Thomas Young: inventor, scientist, linguist, Egyptologist and physiologist. He died in 1829.

From 1800 to year 2000, the worldwide rate of publication of print books has skyrocketed from about 15.000 to 700.000. Even the amount of text published on the Internet in a single day would take more than a lifetime for one person to read. When it comes to the amount of scientific knowledge available today, the sheer amount of it means that specialization in one field alone is a very time-demanding enterprise.

“In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic

number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.”

― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success, 2008.

Interdisciplinarity: What is it?

8

New solutions to problems can come from seeing things from a different perspective than your own, and from seeing how others approach it. In academia today, interdisciplinarity is therefore perceived as a key to solving some of the great challenges society is facing, in innovative ways. Students should of course also be included in this proces.

“

”Sigrid Bjerre Andersen, Braintrust

Thomas Young: inventor, scientist,

linguist, Egyptologist and physiologist.

7

On April 23rd, 2013, Braintrust arranged the first ever Interdisciplinary Knowledge Lab, bringing together 24 students from 21 different disciplines and 16 different countries, and matching them in six interdisciplinary teams.

Braintrust wished to create an experimental space for interdisciplinary learning, and to put their vision into practice – namely to show how students benefit from sharing their knowledge with each other and working together in a common space, be it social or virtual.

The Live Interdisciplinary Knowledge Lab gave students a chance to do something they rarely do, which is to put their specific academic skills to use, and work with students from other disciplines on finding possible solutions to specific problems.

Academics tend not to be trained to think in terms of visual models, so a group of visual consultants were at the participants’ disposal at the Interdisciplinary Knowledge Lab, to give ideas and suggest angles

to the solution models the teams came up with. The visual consultants are associates of Braintrust trained in disciplines such as architecture, graphic design and industrial design.

Braintrust also invited 9 expert evaluators from the private and public sector to come and see the solution prototypes of the interdisciplinary collaborations, and to give their expert opinion on their viability.

Braintrust had the interdisciplinary teams focus on solution-models for creating better societies, as outlined in the European Union’s Horizon 2020 framework. Horizon 2020 is the EU’s framework program for research and innovation, outlining the major challenges facing Europe and, in many cases, the world at large, in the years to come.

Horizon 2020 is designed to help bring more good ideas to the market, and has three main objectives, namely to create excellent science, competitive industries and better societies.

10

Interdisciplinary Knowledge Lab #1

Included in the “better societies” aim are broad challenge-areas such as ‘Longer and Healthier Lives’, ‘Reliable, Clean and Efficient Energy’, ‘Efficient Use of Resources for Protection of our Planet’, ‘Inclusive Innovation and Secure Society’, ‘Safe, Secure Food Suppy’, and ‘Smart, Green Transport’.

These challenges will receive special research focus and funding from the EU in the years to come.

The reason why the Knowledge Lab was set in this framework was, in part, because the event was supported by EU’s Youth in Action programme, but also out of a desire to focus on the broad and complex issues that today’s students will be compelled to solve over the coming decade and beyond.

It is Braintrust’s belief that many of these challenges will require multiple types of skills and insights to solve, and will require a complex interaction and co-operation between different disciplines.

11

“

”

“I want to see how it is to work with people from different disciplines. I have experienced difficulties with interdisciplinary work in the business where I worked, and I want to see if there’s a better way of doing it.”

Jean Kalmus, Telecommunications/IT at Technical University of Denmark, from France.

“I expect to exchange ideas, and network with people.”

Krasimira Atanasova, IT and Cognition, University of Copenhagen, from Bulgaria.

“It’ll be interesting to get a peak of the insides of different disciplines. And I’m curious to see if interdisciplinarity works, if we can come up with something innovative and new at the end of it.”

Eva Spiekerman, Global Studies, Roskilde University, from Portugal/Germany.

I’m here first and foremost to see how much creativity you can find in students working together, but also to give the commercial aspects a check. And I think I can. As you can see today, people are extremely varied in their ideas. Some of the ideas might never work in real life, but there are a few of them that actually could go all the way, and that could be commercially viable, in addition to helping people.

Thomas Bjerre, Expert Evaluator, The Advanced Technology Foundation

One of the posters used to market the conference.

Braintrust’s key aim is “knowledge without borders,” and interdisciplinary cooperation is the driving concept in achieving this. However, the different disciplinary ‘languages’ create barriers to understanding, communicating with, and ultimately cooperating with those outside your own disciplinary field.

Visualisation, from drawing to model-making, can be an indispensible tool in helping to overcome such barriers. At the most basic level, it can act as a sort of visual ‘lingua franca’ – as a kind of language making communication possible between people not sharing a ‘disciplinary tongue.’ Indeed, even discussions between relatively similar disciplines that have distinct semantic differences between them can be made more fluent and effective when using visual symbols and models that pertain to a shared concept.

Visualization, combined with using analogies for a particular problem, can encourage members of an interdisciplinary team to look at a familiar problem with fresh eyes, and make connections between

analogous solutions to other problems in ways that might not have appeared obvious. It can also make the team work more ‘democratically’– allowing each member to contribute in their own, appropriate way.

Finally, visualization can help with problem solving: when you can ‘see’ the problem, you will also be more able to visualise the solution. Making a problem – especially an abstract one – tangible, for instance to build a three-dimensional model of a problem (or an analogy of a problem) allows the team to literally walk around the problem and see it from different angles.

Creating analogies and freeing the Students from different disciplines from the langauge and semantics of their fields can enable better cross disciplinary co-

operation, and allow them to view the problems and solutions in new ways.

A Visual ‘Lingua Franca’

12

Read more about Braintrust’s tools and inspiration for developing a Visual Lingua Franca:

http://issuu.com/braintrustbase/docs/ lingua_franca1

http://issuu.com/braintrustbase/docs/lingua_franca1

In some cases, building a model was a catalyst in itself for solving the problem at hand. In all of the groups, the finished models made their solution more accessible for people who were not part of their process, and also increased the opportunity for people of different disciplines to be able to describe their particular elements of the end solution.

“

”David B. Earle, Visual Consultant at the Braintrust Live Interdisciplinary Knowledge Lab #1

An example of a Feynman Diagram (here showing the decay of a netron into a proton). First developed by theortical Physicist Richard Feyman in 1948, they provided a framework by which the complex mathematical expressions which govern the behaviour of sub-atomic particles could be visualised.First used solely in the field of quantum field theory, it is now used in many other fields of physics. It has been said that enabling the visualisation of these complex fields has revolutionized nearly every aspect of theoretical physics.

13

PROBLEM BRAINSTORMING: GENERATING IDEAS FOR PROBLEMS TO WORK ON

Braintrust get the teams themselves to decide on a problem within their assigned challenge-area, in order to ensure that they are work-ing on a problem they are interested in. This is because an important factor in problem-solving is that you are engaged by the problem and motivated to solve it.

A lot of ideas that initially seem unfeasible might turn out to be good ones, or can, in a group setting, inspire other ideas that work better. Therefore, it is important to get all ideas out on the table. By facili-tating uncritical thinking, people tend to generate more ideas than if they think critically. Academics are trained to see flaws and holes in theories, and can do the same with their own ideas. The brainstorm-ing exercise forbids that, in order to get as many, and as diverse ideas as possible. It’s a way of broadening the scope and horizon of how we view a subject.

IMPORTANT TASKS FOR THE FACILITATORS IN THIS EXERCISE:

Reminding the teams of the seven rules of brainstorming.

Correcting critical attitudes/responses to ideas.

Encouraging dialogue and thinking out loud.

Helping teams come up with problems that are as concrete as possible.

Keeping the time.

15MINS

“Our theme was...very, very broad. So I think the challenge

is really narrowing it down.” Marie Blønd, team 7

“I think we did a good job. It was a very short time-interval

we had, but we came up with a lot of ideas.”

Gunnar Helgi Gunnste, team 4

“I liked the fact that the tasks have time limits. It makes you

move faster, and that’s nice.”Ksenia Bellmann, team 7

“Especially in the mapping-process where we tried to

conceptualize a problem, we used some approaches from political science and

economics. We had an engineer here, who provided

the technical knowledge.”Sven Hilgers, team 4

Mapping

14

STAGE 1

THE MAPPING-STAGE OF THE PROCESS IS DESIGNED TO FIND OUT WHICH PROBLEM THE INTERDISCIPLINARY TEAMS ARE MOTIVATED TO SOLVE, AND WILL FOCUS THEIR COLLABORATIVE PROCESS ON.

THE SEVEN RULES OFBRAINSTORMING1

Remember to say out loud what you write on your post-its. You’ll create more dialogue and probably more ideas.

“”

54

3

21

6

Henrik Chulu, Facilitator

Defer judgementEncourage wild ideasBuild on the ideas of othersStay focused on the topic

Go for quantityOne conversation at a time

Be visual

The teams on the Interdisciplinary Knowledge Lab are instructed to:

15

7

1 IDEO’s ‘Human Centered Design Toolkit’ (2nd Edition)

To choose which idea to work on, the teams should agree on 3-5 criteria that their problem should live up to, and then chose the problem that contains the most of these criteria. In the Interdisciplinary Knowledge Lab, the criteria were: “it must be within EU’s Horizon 2020 framework”; “it must affect people from more than one country”; “it must be a widely known problem”, or; “it must be an underrepresented problem.”

People can get emotionally attached to ideas quite quickly – especially their own. By using selection-criteria, this exercise puts rationality into the decision-making process.

The criteria can also serve to change a team’s problem formulation to a sharper one, or help them become clear on why they want to solve that particular problem. At the same time, what participants should be aware of, is the tendency to try to fit the criteria to one’s favorite idea, instead of choosing an idea based on the criteria.

“This is a big, vague idea. We need to narrow it down.” Simon Bager, team 1

“The most helpful part for arriving at a problem definition, was having a fixed time, so we had to force ourselves through the process.” Lilian Parker Kaule, team 7

“We had some problems reaching the set of criteria, but when we’d settled that, we fairly quickly settled on a problem to solve.” Morten Jensen, team 7

PROBLEM SELECTION: AGREE ON A PROBLEM TO WORK ON

16

It was very full of discussions. And the main thing it taught me was how to persuade people and how to push your ideas, and listen to others’ ideas as well.

“

” Ksenia Bellmann, team 7

PROBLEM SELECTION: AGREE ON A PROBLEM TO WORK ON Important tasks for the facilitators in this exercise:

Helping sort the ideas by criteria, for instance by outlining a matrix for putting the post-its according to how many criteria they live up to.

Reminding groups to try not to tailor the criteria to their “problem-darling”.

Helping negotiate differences of opinion through stimulating constructive dialogue.

Keeping the time.

30MINS

The analogy of tools comes from carpentry.

While a carpenter has concrete tools to do his job,

academics tend to have non-tangible ones to do

theirs, and, as a result, are often not even conscious

of them themselves. In order to make the partici-

pants’ disciplinary and personal tools more visible,

Braintrust introduced the “toolboxing” exercise.

INTERVIEW EXERCISE: WHAT TOOLS HAVE YOU IN YOUR TOOLBOX?

Each participant is paired with a participant from a discipline dif-ferent from their own. The two interview one another for 5 minutes each, about what specifically academic skills they have in their meth-odological toolbox, and how these can be applied in relation to the problem at hand.

By explaining their skills to a person with a completely different background, the interviewee is forced to re-evaluate, re-formulate and translate them in a way that increases their own disciplinary awareness. By using open-ended questions such as ‘What’, ‘Who’, ‘How’, and ‘Why’, the interviewer gets the interviewee to not only draw from his or her usual disciplinary vocabulary, but to unfold and explain what for instance ‘action research’ or ‘regression analysis’ means in practice, and how it can be used.

Each skill is written down on post-its, one skill per note, to be kept for later.

15MINS

Important tasks for the facilitators:

Pair the participants up with someone they don’t know.

Inform them of the fruitfulness of open-ended questions.

Instruct them to write down skills/tools on post-its while they talk.

Toolboxing

18

STAGE 2

PRESENTING EACH OTHER’S SKILLS/TOOLS

Participants here took turns at presenting their interviewee to the double team. The idea is that presenting someone else’s skills takes humbleness out of the equation.

It’s an awareness process to interview and be interviewed by someone, and to have a stranger sum up your skill-base after five minutes of conversation. Most people like opportunities to talk about themselves to an interested listener. This exercise brought about lively chat around the room, as the participants got to interact person to person.

At the end of this exercise, the participants were aware of the tools they and their teammates had at their disposal, and this is a good starting-point for deciding on a solution model.


Keeping the time.

Getting out of the way.

19

30MINS

The most positive experience during the workshop was presenting a person I’ve been interviewing.

“

”Participant answer in evaluation questionnaire.

BRAINSTORMING: POSSIBLE SOLUTION MODELS

How about a radio-newspaper? Cause I’m thinking how can we get the information out there?1...What do we need? We need to focus on that.2...This is ridiculous!3...‘You’re not being fair, this brainstorming thing is not about saying ‘no’4...If you start selecting ideas while you’re generating ideas, you’re going to lose out on a lot of ideas.5

“

”

A variety of ideas were needed again. For the solution brainstorm-ing, teams were advised to use the group’s skills as inspiration. The solution model could be anything from a policy, a business model, a campaign, a website, an app, a research program, a method, a tech-nical solution, an event, an organization, or something completely different.

The brainstorming again followed the seven rules of brainstorming (see page 15).

15MINS


Making sure participants follow the seven rules for brainstorming.

Trying to involve quiet team members by asking them directly what they

think.

Making sure participants verbalize their ideas to stimulate dialogue.

Encouraging participants to write down the ideas, and to draw while

talking.

Ideation

20

STAGE 3

SELECTION: CHOOSING THE MODEL TO WORK ON

How about a radio-newspaper? Cause I’m thinking how can we get the information out there?1...What do we need? We need to focus on that.2...This is ridiculous!3...‘You’re not being fair, this brainstorming thing is not about saying ‘no’4...If you start selecting ideas while you’re generating ideas, you’re going to lose out on a lot of ideas.5

The groups were once again instructed to agree on a set of criteria to select their solution model. Examples of criteria were that ‘the model must fit their disciplinary toolbox’; ‘It must be achievable within a reasonable time scale’; ‘it must be utopian and technically feasible’.

The groups were to sort their problems according to their criteria, and finally agree on a solution-model to develop, write it down and clear the table.

Some of the groups were drawing while discussing. Some seemed to already have decided on a solution model that they wanted to use, and were adapting the criteria to the solution.


Encouraging teams to focus on criteria in an objective way, and not be colored too much by a favorite solution model.

Helping teams sort their solution models by how many of the criteria

the model lives up to, by making a matrix for placing the ideas.

Helping groups overcome disagreements over which criteria

are most important by reflecting with them and summing up the different

point of views.

21

30MINS

1 Participant from team 12 Second participant from team 13 One participant to two others discussing an idea. 4 The reply to the above. 5 Henrik Chulu, Main facilitator.

In this exercise the teams draw a cartoon in three panels, of how their model helps to solve the problem they have selected. It also starts the teams truly thinking in visual terms.

Panel one shows the problem. Panel two shows the team’s solution. Panel three shows the consequence of their solution.

If possible, the teams are encouraged to incorporate the stakeholders as well as their toolbox into the narrative.

If time allows it, a fourth panel can be drawn which shows what will happen if nothing is done about the problem.

Important tasks for the facilitators in this exercise:

Helping sort the ideas by criteria, for instance by outlining a matrix for putting the post-its according to how many criteria they live up to.

Reminding groups to try not to tailor the criteria to their “problem-darling”.

Helping negotiate differences of opinion through stimulating constructive dialogue.

Keeping the time.

OUTLINE NARRATIVE SCENARIOS: A VISUAL STORY IN THREE ACTS

22

Stage 3: Ideation

? + =!

OUTLINE NARRATIVE SCENARIOS: A VISUAL STORY IN THREE ACTS

23

“The creative and visual aspect of making a mod-

el was good for reflecting on the solution. You’re

building it, but at the same time you’re kind of

rethinking the solution again and again and again:

‘does it really show how it’s supposed to work?’

And so you’re really rethinking the idea just be-

cause you’re trying to visualize it. And then the

time-constraint made it a little bit more fun.”

- Jan Zumbach, team 5.

The final part of the process has the participants visualize the problem-solving model they have arrived at. The visualization can be by drawing, building 3D models, making flow-charts, or any other way that comes to mind.

At the teams’ disposal during this exercise, are Braintrust’s visual consultants, cardboard, paper, scissors, glue, thread, colored paper, and clay - tools that are highly unusual in academic work, but that are standard working-tools in creative disciplines.

The teams explain their solution models to Braintrust’s visual consultants, whereupon the visual consultants suggested a way of visualizing it. The teams then work at developing their hitherto theoretical solution-models into tangible, concrete models.

This exercise physically activates the participants. In addition, the visualization makes the teams zoom in on details of their solution models, rethink aspects of it and, not least, see ways of connecting different team-members’ ideas.

15MINS

Important tasks for the visual consultants at this stage:

Help the teams crystallize their solution models, explaining the essence and details of it.

Contribute with ideas to- and practical knowledge of model building and visualization.

In cases where there is a more dominant idea from one member of the team, help enable other ideas from the team being included in the final model, by suggesting physical “add-on’s.”

Prototyping

24

STAGE 4

What is important now, is to show people what it is about

“

”Wojciech Dziadkowiec, Visual Consultant

25

“Ok, that sounds great! Why don’t you build one?”

- David Earle, Visual Consultant.

“Ok, I think one way to do it, if you want a table where people are sitting, you can actu-ally make it out of cardboard. And make little silhouettes too. And all of them would have some symbol on them. Because that would give you a little bit more space to draw on, and it would maybe be easier to grasp the message. And on the table you can have like the European flag or whatever you wanted.”Bojana Romnic, Visual consultant.

“It’s just that there are so many complex ideas going on here. If we had a three dimensional box plus a smaller version of the same thing, cause its scalable, and then if we make with pins and pieces of paper, little signs all over the model, saying what’s happening here and what are the benefits, I think it would be a

lovely three dimensional way of expressing the whole of your ideas.”

- David Earle, Visual Consultant.

“How will we create this?” - Burak Bican, Architecture, team 6.

“If you do it this way, it’ll maybe be easier to understand”Ragnhild Hagström, Visual consultant

“There was a lot of discussion of how to vis-ualize our idea. It made us more aware that we still need a physical space to be active because we are people who need to interact somewhere and with someone.”

- Ksenia Bellmann, (Migration & Ethnic Relations), team 7

The presentation stage of the interdisciplinary collaboration is a kind of “show-and-tell-exercise,” where teams present their solution, and explain how it helps solve their chosen problem and how they would carry it out.

The teams are “selling” their solution models to their audiences and, at the Live Interdisciplinary Knowledge Lab #1, to a team of expert evaluators, too, inasmuch as they have to explain why their solution is needed and why it would work, in other words; it’s selling points.

Presenting the solution model prototype in this way brings together the team’s different disciplinary tools and knowledge, with the stakeholders map.

Important tasks for facilitators/visual consultants at this stage:

Help teams prepare display; clarify what symbolizes what, and how the bits are connected.

Presentation

26

STAGE 5

AcknowledgementsThis e-book is the result of a project organised by the Braintrust Association (Foreningen Braintrust), and sponsored by the EU’s Youth in Action Programme and the University of Copenhagen.

Authoring: Kitty Elisabeth Byng

Editing and lay-out: David B. Earle

Copyright: Foreningen Braintrust 2013. The book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Thanks to the following for contributing to the realisation of the Interdisciplinary Knowledge Lab:

Academic consultants:Katrine Lindvig (University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Humanities)

Bente Merete Stallknecht (University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Science)

Bojana Romic (Malmö University)

Mathias Munch (Copenhagen Business School)

Trine Villumsen Berling (Centre for Advanced Security Theory, University of Copenhagen)

Ida Meisling (Roskilde University)

Visual consultants:Wojciech DziadkowiecRagnhild HagströmDavid B. Earle

Facilitators:Henrik ChuluIda Marie FichKatrine Danielle BjaarnøJulie Richard FjeldstedSigrid Bjerre Andersen

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.This publication reflects the views only of the

author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

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