Onboarding in Transdisciplinary Collaboration

To foster a positive and productive collaboration between students and the project partner from the outset, host an informal get-together, where the transdisciplinary team can meet and get to know each other.

Initiate the onboarding process by guiding participants — students, project partners and yourself — towards a reflective orientation on the upcoming transdisciplinary collaboration. Begin by bringing all participants together and explaining the purpose of onboarding.

Then, instruct everyone to engage in a moment of personal reflection regarding their role and expectations for the project. Provide sticky notes and ask everyone to write down answers to the following questions:

• What do I bring to this collaboration?
• What do I get from this collaboration?
• What do I need in this collaboration?

Encourage openness and honesty in these reflections, as they will lay the groundwork for building a strong, cohesive team.

Give the students and project partners two minutes to think about their expectations of the other participants in the transdisciplinary collaboration, taking their answers from Step 2 into account. How can what they need be translated into specific expectations for their team members?

The team appoints a note-taker who will write down keywords on a sticky note for each expressed expectation.

Now the exchange can take place. Each team member (student, project partner and the teacher) will get a turn. When it’s their turn, the team member asks the other team members:

“What do you (as a teacher, student or project partner) expect from me?”

By listening carefully to others, ensure there is no repetition. The team member who asked the question should only ask clarifying questions without reacting. The exchange continues for as long as new expectations are being expressed. All sticky notes will be placed on the table.

Instruct the team to analyse the expectations on the sticky notes. As a starting point, the team clusters the sticky notes, using these guiding questions:

• Where do you see similarities?
• Where do you see differences?

First, focus on the similarities. How can you translate these expectations into concrete working agreements as a team? Write these working agreements down on a separate sheet of paper.

Now turn to the sticky notes that were placed in the ‘differences’ cluster. Discuss these sticky notes, using the following guiding questions: 

• Which differences can be overcome?
• Which differences seem difficult to align? 

During the conversation, try to truly listen to each other. Identify the concerns underlying the expectations. What can you do to address or mitigate these concerns? What could be a working compromise? Remember to address all sticky notes. Towards the end of your conversations, try to write down concrete work agreements again.

Now, the teams will translate the collected expectations into a Collaboration Blueprint. The collaboration blueprint will function as a summary and symbol of the team’s collaboration. The team discusses the following questions to complete the blueprint:

• Goal setting: what is the main goal of this collaboration?
• What are our criteria for success? When are we satisfied with the input? And when are we satisfied with the output?
• Why is our goal important? How are we showing commitment to this goal?

Lastly, the team comes up with a creative expression that symbolises their team’s collaboration. This expression can take any form, such as a symbol, image, sentence or living statue.

Assessment as learning aims to strengthen the learning process and the development of metacognitive skills. It empowers students to direct their own learning and to become independent, critical self-assessors.

Self assessment

Self-regulated learning

Reflective questions