CARING FUTURES: a study protocol for transdisciplinary qualitative research on technology-mediated care practices and theory development for ethics of care

Introduction The world’s population is ageing. As older persons live longer and increase in number, society faces a greater disease burden and, in public welfare, a corresponding resource deficit. New technology is one solution to this deficit but there is scarce knowledge about ethical aspects of such innovations in care practices. In CARING FUTURES, we address this scarcity by interrogating how new technology in care can become ethically sound and, correspondingly, how ethics of care can become more technology aware. Our concern is to protect quality care for the future. Methods and analysis CARING FUTURES advances transdisciplinarity through knowledge exchange around technology-mediated care and ethics of care, involving key stakeholders. We rely on established and innovative methods to generate experience-near and practice-near knowledge. Through this empirical research, we seek to expand understanding of technology-mediated care and to enrich ethics of care theory. Ethics and dissemination Empirical studies have been approved or await approval by national ethics committees. CARING FUTURES is designed to create societal impact through Knowledge Transfer Events targeting stakeholders in health, care and welfare, and Educational Packages for students of care—providing knowledge-exchange forums for future academics and practitioners of care. The project’s societal impact is also ensured in that participating researchers are also practitioners and/or educators of care personnel for the future. Project findings will be disseminated through scientific publications and conference presentations. Through communication in both traditional and digital media platforms, we engage in dialogues between researchers, user groups, policy makers and the wider public.publishedVersio

What is robotics made of? The interdisciplinary politics of robotics research

Under framings of grand challenges, robotics has been proposed as a solution to a wide range of societal issues such as road safety, ageing society, economic productivity and climate change. However, what exactly is robotics research? From its inception, robotics has been an inherently interdisciplinary field, bringing together diverse domains such as engineering, cognitive science, computer science and, more recently, knowledge from social sciences and humanities. Previous research on interdisciplinarity shows that this mode of knowledge production is often driven by societal concerns and political choices. The politics of who gets to make these choices and on what terms is the focus of empirical research in this paper. Using a novel mixed-method approach combining bibliometrics, desk-based analysis and fieldwork, this article builds a narrative of interdisciplinarity at the UK’s largest public robotics lab, the Bristol Robotics Laboratory. This paper argues for the recognition of the plural ways of knowing interdisciplinarity. From citation analysis, through tracing of the emerging fields and disciplines, to, finally, the investigation of researchers’ experiences; each method contributes a distinct and complementary outlook on “what robotics is made of”. While bibliometrics allows visualising prominent disciplines and keywords, document analysis reveals influential and missing stakeholders. Meanwhile, fieldwork explores the logics underpinning robotics and identifies the capabilities necessary to perform the research. In doing so, the paper synthesises plural ways of locating politics in interdisciplinary research and provides recommendations for enabling “structural preparedness for interdisciplinarity”

University Campus Living Labs

Universities and their changing role in society is a source of perennial debate. In this article, we examine the emergent phenomenon of University Campus Living Labs (UCLL), the set of practices by which universities use their own buildings, streets or energy infrastructure as experimental settings in order to support applied teaching, research and co-creation with society. While most existing studies of UCLLs focus on them as sustainability instruments, we explore the UCLL phenomenon from an open-ended and fresh angle. Using living labs in five European universities as exemplary cases, we demonstrate the breadth and variability of this emerging phenomenon through five analytical dimensions to unpack the multiple forms and purposes that UCLLs can have. We furthermore consider aspects of inclusiveness and situatedness of living lab co-creation and testing and what the UCLL phenomena may come to mean for the continuously changing university, calling for future studies to substantiate these aspects

Digital Health and Africa: an emerging narrative

The potential and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to cater for digital health depend on the context and its meaning-making. Therefore, the concepts and materialization of digital health in Africa are specific for Africa. This transdisciplinary and reflexive paper introduces and positions African particulars pertaining ICTs and an emerging narrative of digital health in Africa. The narrative pivots decentering and the necessary interplay of African community engagement, workforce enhancement, and thought leadership as the means towards inclusive and embedded digital health interventions in Africa

Future states: design and science for sustainability

In 2017 CERN IdeaSquare collaborated with the Royal College of Art, London to explore how an interdisciplinary approach to innovation that combines science, technology, design and business might address the global sustainability challenges as embodied in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals 2030. This collaboration examined how an interdisciplinary design led model of innovation that fuses design thinking with scientific discovery, could enable the innovative and potentially disruptive technologies from CERN to address the world’s most intractable challenges, and specifically the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). In this paper we explore the nature of interdisciplinary innovation, recent trends in its approach, and describe the way this has been applied, through action research, to generate product service systems that address the UN’s SDGs

Report from the STEM 2026 Workshop on Assessment, Evaluation, and Accreditation

A gathering of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) higher education stakeholders met in November 2018 to consider the relationship between innovation in education and assessment. When we talk about assessment in higher education, it is inextricably linked to both evaluation and accreditation, so all three were considered. The first question we asked was can we build a nation of learners? This starts with considering the student, first and foremost. As educators, this is a foundation of our exploration and makes our values transparent. As educators, how do we know we are having an impact? As members and implementers of institutions, programs and professional societies, how do we know students are learning and that what they are learning has value? The focus of this conversation was on undergraduate learning, although we acknowledge that the topic is closely tied to successful primary and secondary learning as well as graduate education. Within the realm of undergraduate education, students can experience four-year institutions and two-year institutions, with many students learning at both at different times. Thirty-seven participants spent two days considering cases of innovation in STEM education, learning about the best practices in assessment, and then discussing the relationship of innovation and assessment at multiple levels within the context of higher education. Six working groups looked at course-level, program-level, and institution-level assessment, as well as cross-disciplinary programs, large-scale policy issues, and the difficult-to-name “non-content/cross-content” group that looked at assessment of transferable skills and attributes like professional skills, scientific thinking, mindset, and identity, all of which are related to post-baccalaureate success. These conversations addressed issues that cut across multiple levels, disciplines, and course topics, or are otherwise seen as tangential or perpendicular to perhaps “required” assessment at institutional, programmatic, or course levels. This report presents the context, recommendations, and “wicked” challenges from the meeting participants and their working groups. Along with the recommendations of workshop participants, these intricate challenges weave a complex web of issues that collectively need to be addressed by our community. They generated a great deal of interest and engagement from workshop participants, and act as a call to continue these conversations and seek answers that will improve STEM education through innovation and improved assessment. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DUE-1843775. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation

Report from the STEM 2026 Workshop on Assessment, Evaluation, and Accreditation

A gathering of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) higher education stakeholders met in November 2018 to consider the relationship between innovation in education and assessment. When we talk about assessment in higher education, it is inextricably linked to both evaluation and accreditation, so all three were considered. The first question we asked was can we build a nation of learners? This starts with considering the student, first and foremost. As educators, this is a foundation of our exploration and makes our values transparent. As educators, how do we know we are having an impact? As members and implementers of institutions, programs and professional societies, how do we know students are learning and that what they are learning has value? The focus of this conversation was on undergraduate learning, although we acknowledge that the topic is closely tied to successful primary and secondary learning as well as graduate education. Within the realm of undergraduate education, students can experience four-year institutions and two-year institutions, with many students learning at both at different times. Thirty-seven participants spent two days considering cases of innovation in STEM education, learning about the best practices in assessment, and then discussing the relationship of innovation and assessment at multiple levels within the context of higher education. Six working groups looked at course-level, program-level, and institution-level assessment, as well as cross-disciplinary programs, large-scale policy issues, and the difficult-to-name “non-content/cross-content” group that looked at assessment of transferable skills and attributes like professional skills, scientific thinking, mindset, and identity, all of which are related to post-baccalaureate success. These conversations addressed issues that cut across multiple levels, disciplines, and course topics, or are otherwise seen as tangential or perpendicular to perhaps “required” assessment at institutional, programmatic, or course levels. This report presents the context, recommendations, and “wicked” challenges from the meeting participants and their working groups. Along with the recommendations of workshop participants, these intricate challenges weave a complex web of issues that collectively need to be addressed by our community. They generated a great deal of interest and engagement from workshop participants, and act as a call to continue these conversations and seek answers that will improve STEM education through innovation and improved assessment. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DUE-1843775. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation