Interdisciplinary research and interprofessional collaboration are becoming increasingly important in the modern academic context. Therefore, members of the CRC 1333 attended a two-days-workshop given by Prof. Dr. Tobias Schmohl which focused on challenges and opportunities of cooperations across the disciplines in their research projects as well as with regard to their graduation processes.
On the first day, the workshop focused the basics of inter- and transdisciplinarity in scientific practice. The participants discussed potentials and problems that can arise from interdisciplinary cooperation and reflected on their own experiences and case analyses. The goal was to become aware of the issues that typically come up in interdisciplinary scientific cooperation and to be able to both recognise the difficulties associated with interdisciplinary processes in their collaborations as well as to deal with these difficulties constructively.
On the second day, the workshop focused on the different phases of a research process, as well as on basic methodological approaches in the natural sciences and other fields of research. The participants worked on developing specific, action-guiding approaches and tools to structure their respective collaborative scientific projects. They also got to know and discussed a concrete instrument for reflecting on their role as part of an interdisciplinary team.
Due to the pandemic situation, the workshop took place as an e-learning-seminar. Methods alternated between small group work, work on examples from scientific practice, peer feedback, plenary discussions and input-oriented mediation. To this end, different browser-based tools were used to structure the interaction and discussion – by familiarizing with those tools within the workshop, the participants also learned how they can also be used to design interdisciplinary interactions in future collaborations.