Benefits of Research Collaboration

Interdisciplinary graduate students will often –though not always – find research collaboration useful. This is one path to both drawing on disciplinary expertise and learning to respect different viewpoints:

· The sort of seminar recommended under Developing Independent Researchers can be very useful in this respect. Students often find connections between their research interests that had not been apparent before. [Catherine Lyall, Ann Bruce, Joyce Tait, and Laura Meagher, Interdisciplinary Research Journeys (Bloomsbury Academic 2011), and the Gardner article in Issues in Integrative Studies (2011) speak to these. See http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/view/Interdisciplinary-Research-Journeys/book-ba-9781849661782.xml ]

· Graduate students can be given various exercises to develop their collaborative skills. For example, Dan Stokols has an exercise where students write a question on a piece of paper, and subsequent students add some insight into how the question might be answered. Or, students may be asked to form a team to address a particular question.

· One important curricular idea is the use of systems theory, with a stress on feedbacks [that is, mapping; see Mapping Interdisciplinary Connections] to show students how different areas of expertise can be related.