Interdisciplinary Community Service Learning: Addressing Challenges Through Transdisciplinary Research

Course Objective

The objectives of the course Interdisciplinary Community Service Learning: Addressing Challenges through Transdisciplinary Research are that students:

• Become familiar with, acquire practical experience with, and obtain competencies in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research and Community Service Learning (CSL).
  
• Acquire insight into the complexity of wicked problems and corresponding multi-actor systems.
  
• Are able to integrate knowledge and insights from different disciplines in order to produce results, insights, and solutions for various complex societal challenges that transcend disciplines and organizational barriers.
  
• Develop the ability to collaborate in a cross-disciplinary team, through effective interdisciplinary communication, team role definition, and joint goal-setting.
  
• Gain experience with critical self-reflection to become aware of their own position in the team, critically challenge their assumptions about science and their discipline, and take an active role in their own learning process.
  
• Are able to communicate and have a dialogue about the research findings and implications with a broad audience including researchers of a variety of disciplines and also interested community members and community partners.

Course Content

In the 21st century, we increasingly face complex societal challenges, such as climate change, pollution, social segregation, digitalization, and inequality in health, literacy, and wealth. These so-called ‘wicked’ problems transcend disciplines and involve a wide variety of actors. Due to their complex and interrelated nature, addressing these challenges requires a transdisciplinary approach: integrating knowledge from different academic disciplines and actively connecting actors from universities and a variety of societal organizations.

This course runs parallel to a thesis, graduation project or internship.
Interdisciplinary student teams integrate their individual research projects to contribute to a larger relevant societal issue, through research questions that have been defined in the preceding course “Interdisciplinary Community Service Learning: Defining Challenges in a Multi-Stakeholder Context”.

The course translates these research questions into various research projects and adds interdisciplinarity through integration and reflection. Interdisciplinary student teams meet periodically for intervision, reflection, and integration. A joint research question is defined at the beginning of the course, and the team works toward answering the joint overall research question and subquestions. The teams work towards a collective report that integrates the different disciplinary findings, to arrive at a higher, more applicable, and more holistic answer to the overall research question.

The course builds up to a Dialogue Event near the end of the course. The results of the course are presented and discussed in a joint transdisciplinary process, in which students, societal actors and scientists share, discuss, interpret and integrate knowledge, and experiences to define opportunities for follow-up activities.

Additional Information Teaching Methods

‘Interdisciplinary Community Service Learning: Addressing Challenges through Transdisciplinary Research’ is a part-time course, spread out over a 28-week period (6 ECTS). The total study time is approximately 164 hours. Tuition methods include supervised and unsupervised group meetings, lectures, reflection and feedback meetings, group project work, and the Dialogue Event. The different elements have the following study time:

• Face-to-face meetings (workgroups, training, intervision and other meetings): 40 hours
• Project work & self-study (assignments, preparation of Dialogue Event): 124 hours

Attending the Dialogue Event is a mandatory requirement, it will not be possible to pass the course without having attended this meeting.

Method of Assessment

The course grade is based on a grade for the written end report, a grade for the participation at the Dialogue Event and a grade for personal
performance. Each partial grade needs to be 5.5 or higher to pass the course.

Literature

Additional Information Target Audience

The course ‘Interdisciplinary Community Service Learning: Addressing Challenges through Transdisciplinary Research’ is an elective within the master program ‘Management, Policy Analysis and Entrepreneurship in Health and Life Sciences’, but it can be followed as an optional course for all master students from the VU University and other universities. The course is especially relevant for students who want to explore hands-on interdisciplinary cooperation to find effective approaches for societal challenges. This course is also part of the Studypath Science, Society and Communication.
Please contact the course coordinator prior to enrollment.

Additional Information

• Registration through Vunet. For more information, please contact the course coordinator Frederique Demeijer via f.a.demeijer@vu.nl
  
• The entire course is in English.
  
• For more information about the course, see www.vu.nl/icsl. The website also features a video with the experiences of students who participated earlier in this course.
  
• A related course Interdisciplinary Community Service Learning: Defining Challenges in a Multi-Stakeholder Context can be followed that
  runs in period 2 of the academic year. It is focused on the definition of societal challenges together with community members and partners, thus providing a good preparation for this course (but it is not an entry requirement: you can also take just one of these two courses).

Use of Generative AI (GenAI)

This course follows the BETA Faculty policy on GenAI use. Use

GenAI responsibly and in line with the VU academic integrity policy and the VU recommendations on responsible use of GenAI.

AI may be used for pre-task activities such as brainstorming, outlining and initial research, but we prefer students to not use AI. Working in an interdisciplinary team will be an enriching experience and you can pick each other's brain. Also, the reflection exercises are there for us to get an understanding of your thought processes, not those of generative AI.

Explanation Canvas

All lectures, reading materials, videos, assignments and further information will be provided on Canvas