Navigating interdisciplinarity:Negotiating discipline, embodiment, and materiality on a field methods training course

This article elucidates some of the opportunities and challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration in teaching, drawing on our participant observation as both instructors of anthropological methods and honorary students of marine ecology and geomorphology methods on a research training field course. We argue that interdisciplinary methods training offers educators opportunities for self-reflexivity, recognition of the taken-for-granted aspects of our knowledge, and improved communication of the value of our work to others. However, we also show how decisions about course structure can reinforce disciplinary boundaries, limiting inter-epistemic knowledge production; how one epistemological approach may overshadow others, hindering interdisciplinary learning; and how methods training involves tacit and embodied knowledge and mastery of material methods, requiring repetition and experimentation. We offer insights into how we as educators can improve our communication of the value of anthropology and its methods. First, instructors in any discipline should develop an awareness of how their tacit knowledge affects the pedagogical process. Second, instead of enskilling instructors to teach a variety of methods, it may be more beneficial for instructors to teach their own areas of expertise, in dialogue and collaboration with other disciplines. Third, interdisciplinary courses must be carefully planned to allow equal participation of different disciplines, so that anthropology is understood on its own terms and embedded in the course from the outset

Systems & Design Thinking: A Conceptual Framework for Their Intergration

This paper explores the relationship between Systems and Design Thinking. It specifically looks into the role of Design in Systems Thinking and how looking at the world through a systems lens influences Design. Our intention is to show the critical concepts developed in the Systems and Design Thinking fields, their underlying assumptions, and the ways in which they can be integrated as a cohesive conceptual framework. While there are many important distinctions that must be considered to understand the similarities and differences of these concepts, gaining a complete understanding of these factors is more than can be covered in this paper. Nevertheless, the most critical classifying variable used to distinguish these concepts will be discussed in order to make their integration possible. This variable, the recognition of purposeful behavior, will be used to develop a conceptual vision for how a combined approach can be used to research, plan, design and manage social systems…Systems in which people play the principle role

From Ivory Towers to the Board Room:

From Ivory Towers to the Board Room: The Development of Anthropologists in Busines

Sounding the reef: comparative acoustemologies of underwater noise pollution / Pejling af revet: komparativ akustemologi af undersøisk støjforurening

Matthew Buttacavoli studied the development and detection of the category of underwater noise pollution in the Great Barrier Reef. He examined the phenomenon using a multi-species ethnographic approach. He found that bodily affordances and species’ boundaries that make sensing underwater noise difficult, can be overcome through technology and skilled practice. [Extract from Danish abstract] Denne afhandling vælger en etnografisk strategi til at undersøge, hvordan interesserede lyttere forsøger at opfatte og rekonstruere det akustiske havmiljø. Observation og interviews af deltagere sættes sammen med optagelse og kreative metoder for at kortlægge de (ufuldkomne) måder, hvorpå lyttere (herunder forfatteren) forsøger at forstå havskabningers lydverdener. I fokus er de lyttemetoder, der blev udviklet af dykkere, havforskere, akustikere og interesseorganisationer

Characterizing the Application of Design Ethnography Techniques to Improve Novice Human-Centered Design Processes.

Design is a central, distinguishing feature of engineering, requiring the development of technical solutions to societal problems. Successful design solutions must not only be technically sound, but also well-adapted to the context and culture in which they will be used. However, the most commonly used methods for eliciting and characterizing stakeholder preferences do not typically reveal critical stakeholder and contextual information. Through the studies described in this dissertation, I explore the use of design ethnography during front-end engineering design phases to capture both stakeholder preferences and contextual knowledge to inform engineering design decision making. Design ethnography is a set of primarily qualitative data collection and analysis techniques that have been adapted from the field of anthropology to augment the engineering design process. Studies from the fields of human-computer interaction and product development have demonstrated that design ethnography techniques are cost-effective and lead to more successful products. However, the design ethnography literature lacks critical understanding of the major barriers and factors that influence design ethnography success, methodologies for synthesizing and applying design ethnography data, best practices to engage with stakeholders, developmental trajectories of novice to expert skill acquisition, and case studies of how design ethnography has been implemented in diverse settings. The studies detailed in this dissertation employ a mixture of quantitative and qualitative research methods to address these gaps in the literature. Through this research, I have characterized novice design ethnography implementation strategies and identified internal and external factors that affect design ethnography execution; investigated correlations between information processing ability and the quality of product requirements developed; established a framework for evaluating and directing design ethnography stakeholder interviews; developed a case study within a global health design context; and interpreted the findings within a theoretically grounded model to represent novice to expert development. This body of work informs strategies and processes for engaging with stakeholders and understanding broader contexts in design work to improve design decision making within both design professional practice and engineering education.PhDMechanical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/133391/1/imohedas_1.pd

Oceanus.

v. 28, no. 1 (1985

Reconceptualizing design research in the age of mobile learning

© 2015 Taylor & Francis. The purpose of this paper is to begin to examine how the intersection of mobile learning and design research prompts the reconceptualization of research and design individually as well as their integration appropriate for current, complex learning environments. To fully conceptualize and reconceptualize design research in mobile learning, the authors address and unpack the unique affordances of mobile learning and implications for design research as well as the design process that has impact on both. Asserting a socio-cultural view of learning, investigating mobile devices as cultural transformational tools is proposed to potentially expand perceptions and access to resources not only in how we view teaching and learning (as a form of social capital), but also in how we design for it and conduct research in complex settings

IDR : a participatory methodology for interdisciplinary design in technology enhanced learning

One of the important themes that emerged from the CAL’07 conference was the failure of technology to bring about the expected disruptive effect to learning and teaching. We identify one of the causes as an inherent weakness in prevalent development methodologies. While the problem of designing technology for learning is irreducibly multi-dimensional, design processes often lack true interdisciplinarity. To address this problem we present IDR, a participatory methodology for interdisciplinary techno-pedagogical design, drawing on the design patterns tradition (Alexander, Silverstein & Ishikawa, 1977) and the design research paradigm (DiSessa & Cobb, 2004). We discuss the iterative development and use of our methodology by a pan-European project team of educational researchers, software developers and teachers. We reflect on our experiences of the participatory nature of pattern design and discuss how, as a distributed team, we developed a set of over 120 design patterns, created using our freely available open source web toolkit. Furthermore, we detail how our methodology is applicable to the wider community through a workshop model, which has been run and iteratively refined at five major international conferences, involving over 200 participants