Baarends, Willy

Colrove, JC

Machado, Ines

Nonnekens, Julie

Sommers, D

van der Sanden, MCA

English

EUR Research Repository

The Corona Research Super Project: a virtual transdisciplinary research projectDaniël Sommers1, Willy M. Baarends2, Johanna C. Colgrove3, Inês Chaves4, Maarten C. A. van der Sanden5, Julie Nonnekens6#Affiliations1 Delft University of Technology, Department of Science Education & Communication2 Erasmus MC, Department of Developmental Biology3 Delft University of Technology and Erasmus Medical Center joint Nanobiology program 4 Erasmus MC, Department of Molecular Genetics5 Delft University of Technology, Department of Science Education & Communication6 Erasmus MC, Department of Molecular Genetics, Department of Radiology & Nuclear Medicine, Oncode Institute.# Corresponding author: Dr. Julie Nonnekens, Erasmus MC, Room Ee757R, PO box 2040, 3000 CA, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Tel: +31 10 704 32 06. Fax: +31 10 704 47 43 Email: j.nonnekens@erasmusmc.nlAbstractDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, laboratory research was not possible in different educational programs at Delft University of Technology and Erasmus University Medical Center due to the taken measures. Therefore a team of faculty from both institutions developed an alternative transdisciplinary research group project that was fully performed online. The overall project was named the Corona Research Super Project. This project provided an opportunity for students to fulfil the requirements for their degree while complying with the guidelines of the University, Medical Center and the government. It also gave them an opportunity to participate in something that felt meaningful during a stressful time since all sub-projects contributed to developing knowledge on the current COVID-19 pandemic. This article will describe the process of setting up this educational project, the resources provided to the students and the format of transdisciplinary working. Furthermore, it will also provide a theoretical view on how to think about research projects when you cannot be side by side in a laboratory and how to make this into meaningful research education. By sharing our experience of setting up this program in unprecedented times and providing a format, we hope that other universities will use this to develop comparable transdisciplinary educational programs. We believe that these sorts of programs are essential for in depth transdisciplinary training of the scientists of the future.IntroductionThe COVID-19 pandemic affected all layers of society, including students in science and technology. In the Nanobiology program, a joint degree program of the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) and the Erasmus University Medical Center (Erasmus MC) in the Netherlands, students often perform laboratory-based experiments as independent academic research project to complete their Bachelor or Master degree. These students often depend on laboratory facilities to perform experiments.As a result of the lockdown mandated by the Dutch government and subsequent policies instated by the University and Medical Center, many students of the Nanobiology and other programs were unable to continue and finalize their planned research projects. This led a team of faculty and staff to quickly develop an alternative education option, which served to provide an opportunity for these students to fulfil the requirements for their degree and address the Corona crisis. The project, named the “Corona Research Super Project” (CRSP), was designed based on several guiding principles: inclusion, flexibility, innovation, and leverage of existing expertise and structures in the light of inter- and transdisciplinary learning. From the organizational point of view we had three aims and questions: (1) Could we quickly organize a cross university (including multiple departments and study programs) research project, to address an important question and avoid study delays for students? (2) Could we provide a meaningful online/in silico research experience for students that would let them acquire new academic skills and stimulated full engagement? (3) Could we generate useful outcomes that contribute to scientific knowledge? We aimed to create an impactful program that would be substantial, both for the participants and for society in general. We knew many people in other parts of the universities were feeling somewhat at a loss based on their projects suddenly being stopped so from the beginning we decided to make the project open to any who wanted to participate.Project developmentDevelopment of the educational plan was started in a first brainstorm meeting and it was decided to make the project cross disciplinary and open to all study programs at the two universities. PhD students and postdocs were able to join as participant or (junior) supervisors. No selection was applied, and the guiding principle was that all interested and motivated students were welcome. Students were asked to participate for a minimum of four weeks with a minimum contribution of 8 hours per week. Students could independently determine their weekly contribution in terms of hours, based on the requirements they needed to meet for their specific educational program.Educational organization was divided into three parts: student research, faculty mentors and logistics. All three parts were started simultaneously which allowed the organization to move fast. Within 4 weeks of the initial meeting, students were enrolled in groups and research started officially on April 14th 2020. Brainstorm sessions yielded three main topics (figure 1), which were all interconnected and related to the COVID-19 outbreak, and they were based on relevance and on expertise of the recruited supervisors. These topics and an application form were announced on the learning management platform (Brightspace) of the Nanobiology program and other appropriate communication channels such as faculty newsletters, emails to graduate supervisors, study associations and adjacent education programs, to inform students and faculty members of the opportunity to join this transdisciplinary effort.Figure 1: Infographic on the 3 major research topics of the Corona Research Super Project and how they are connected. Participants signed up with a simple online form, which included their preferred topic, their study programs, their personal learning goals as well as what expertise they would bring to the project. Students signed up from a total of 13 different study programs or departments (table 1), ranging from medical programs to architecture and communications. Most students were pursuing a Bachelor’s degree and the motivation most quoted for their participation was to contribute to obtaining scientific knowledge on the subject of COVID-19. In total 60 students were divided in ten groups over the three main topics (table 2) and each group was supervised by one or two faculty from TU Delft and/or Erasmus MC.Table 1: Overview of participating students' programs, affiliations, motivations and degrees (all in descending order of frequency).Study program or department	Nanobiology	Medicine	Infection & Immunity	Life Science & Technology	Communication Design for Innovation	Complex Systems Engineering & Management	Applied Physics	Viroscience	Molecular Genetics	Molecular Medicine	Bionanoscience	Pharmacy	ArchitectureLevel	Bachelor	Master	PhDOriginal project type	Volunteer	Bachelor thesis	Honours program (medicine)	Elective	Master thesis	InternshipTable 2: Overview of the 10 subtopics within the three main categories.Main category	SubtopicLiterature review	Mechanistic differences between influenza and corona viral infections	Critical review of drugs that can be repurposed to treat COVID-19 and their proposed mechanism of action	Inventory of vaccines and treatments for COVID-19	Diagnosis of COVID-19Mathematical modeling	Stochastic models for COVID-19 disease spread	Computational models for COVID-19 testing strategies	Stochastic models for COVID-19 immunity development	Game theoretical modelling of COVID-19 intra-host evolutionSocio-technical tool design	COVID-19 data search and representation of meaningful data	Case study and decision tool development to support the develop of future measures to overcome a pandemic crisisThe organizers provided general information to supervisors, but left it to each group to decide on how best to communicate and work together. During the meetings, students were encouraged to further develop their own research questions within the scope of the proposed topics in their own groups. All groups, while working separately, were connected and exchanged findings and resources. The educational organization team of this project consisted of multiple layers. The CRSP director was directly supported by the Nanobiology program coordinator and a teaching assistant (TA). Furthermore, a small group of CRSP supervisors were involved as advisory committee. This group met each week to discuss organizational aspects. In addition, communication activities were discussed in this meeting with an MSc student that joined the group as a communication’s intern with the task to set up the outreach activities of the CRSP. Communications within as well as between groups and transmission of data and files was facilitated using a SharePoint server which was available for the director and supervisors of the groups. Moreover, every participant in the project had access to a Discord server (discord.com) for exchanging findings and ideas. This greatly facilitated communication among all groups, as it was independent of the different learning management platforms used by the educational programs. A separate email address for the project director was created to facilitate efficient communication with all involved and (external) interested parties.ReportingA variety of activities were executed in the context of the different group projects, and within groups, contributions of individual students differed. To keep track of progress and ensure a cohesive range of products, each group was requested to produce a weekly report. These weekly updates described activities in the past week, challenges that the group faced, and planned directions for further research. In addition, each student was asked to keep a personal logbook (Wick, Decker, Matthes, & Wright, 2013), to be able to account for the requested study credits at the end of the project. On top of this, each week, all group supervisors, director, and presenting students, gathered for a content update. During these virtual meetings a rotating subset of the project groups presented their findings so far and goals for the next weeks. These presentations were followed by feedback discussions in which other groups could provide constructive criticism, and possible overlap between research areas of separate groups could be found, thereby increasing opportunities for collaboration between groups. These weekly update meetings also served as an opportunity to communicate organizational information. Each weekly meeting was chaired by one of the group supervisors who as part of their chairing helped build connections between the research presented with suggestions of how they could build off each other.Each group, as part of their final product, was required to write a final report describing their complete research process and their final findings. All reports included a clear description of author contributions. The complete project spanned 12 weeks. Groups were asked to hand in their draft reports at the end of the 10th week of research. These reports were subsequently peer-reviewed by three other groups. The groups exchanged their peer feedback after one week and had a final week to revise their report and hand in their final versions. The CRSP will be finalized in an open online symposium, which will include presentations from all groups including in depth discussions in break-out rooms. Furthermore, two experts in the field of Corona research will be invited to give a lecture. The symposium will serve to report the results to the TU Delft and Erasmus MC students, faculty communities and other interested persons. The students will acquire presentation skills and enjoy the sense of group achievement. Several of the groups are also developing manuscripts based on the work they did during the project, which will be submitted to scientific journals. Study creditsSince participants joined from various educational programs, acquiring study credits for the CRSP was kept flexible. It was accepted that not all students were getting the same amount of study credits and this was left to the responsibility of the students and their specific program. This allowed for flexibility and eliminated the need to wait for inter-program agreements to be finalized. Students could enroll in a Nanobiology independent research elective (one for Bachelor’s level students and one for Master’s level), this course was pass/fail. Study credits were calculated based on the hours spent on the project. Depending on their study program and what requirement they were fulfilling, students might had to write an additional individual report and/or prepare an individual presentation. Besides obtaining study credits, students could also have joined the project as volunteer or as part of their honors program.Challenges of the projectThe main challenge of the project involved optimization of collaboration between groups. Topics and background experience and knowledge varied significantly and it was challenging to connect all groups so they could benefit from each other’s work. This coincided with a lack of interaction between students working on different topics. During the weekly meetings participants of non-presenting groups did not always attend, hence the degree of interaction varied accordingly. This was partially solved by launching the discord server, which helped to improve interactions and communication. Minor challenges were recruitment of faculty with relevant experience at the beginning of the project, finding the best ways of communication of information to the supervisors and participants, and defining the grading options. These challenges were overcome during the project.Transdisciplinary learningHigher education in general and in the context of COVID-19 specifically, faced a profound challenge in these contemporary times, characterized by an integrated, boundary less, ever evolving world. The students in the CRSP learned that the current separation of disciplinary content no longer held to e.g. understand or to design solutions for complex issues such as COVID-19. Hence, instead of viewing disciplines as blocks of knowledge that defined what to know and what to do, students and lecturers in higher education in general (and the CRSP specific) were encouraged to see disciplines as opportunities to explore different ways of thinking (McGregor, 2017). The collaborative network the students and supervisors of the CRSP were working in is a so called community of learning. McGregor wrote that supporters of transdisciplinary learning assume that learning occurs concurrently within and outside a person, individually and collectively (i.e. community of practice). For each participant, their view of the problem, their chosen approach and possible solutions might have shifted, which could have led to new ideas and concepts, as the transdisciplinary learning cycle continued. They iteratively articulated ideas and suggestions, deliberated them and took action, with the cycle repeating it (McGregor, 2017). Hence, these kind of learning processes are closely linked to triple loop learning (Romme & van Witteloostuijn, 1999). The triple loop transdisciplinary learning process is often described as: how do we decide to do the right thing? Next to the single loop learning (understanding and improvement of COVID-19 situation as it is), and double learning (improving and development of the situation for COVID-19 through improvement of the student’s learning process), triple loop learning discusses the existential questions students might have. Through the betterment of their learning process they were able to reflect on their underlying assumptions on why certain aspects of mitigation of COVID-19 were (not) important. The latter fosters and furthers the development of conceptual ideas students had and gives them the ability to think about transformation of COVID-19 mitigation. This habit of mind might radically change mitigation of COVID-19 for the future since the underlying assumptions of existing strategies might change. So, besides this deep transdisciplinary learning experience of the students that hopefully feeds into their future adaptive professional life, the development of conceptual and transferable ideas about the dynamic context of uncertain future science and technology development is a necessity for robust adaptive mitigation strategies for COVID-19 and the alike for the future.Future of the projectOne of the important learning aims of this project is the ability to work in an inter- and transdisciplinary group, to be able to communicate specialist knowledge to people from other fields, and to work together to answer complex questions, while working remotely. We are developing this project into a permanent educational program in which students from different study programs will work together in interdisciplinary groups on highly relevant biomedical research questions, that require a transdisciplinary approach. If the societal circumstances permit, these projects may also include a wet lab component. This format will be developed into a full-time 4 month project for students at the end of their BSc or 1st year of MSc.Conclusion The aims of this project were to (1) quickly organize a project to serve as substitute for cancelled student research programs, (2) provide a meaningful opportunity for students to gain skills and experience in collaboration and (3) contribute to scientific knowledge about COVID-19. By setting this project up as an open program for all interested persons, a large variety of students and supervisors joined the project, which allowed a multidisciplinary approach to answering COVID-19 related research questions. The use of available infrastructure in the organizations (e.g. SharePoint and Discord) allowed the project to develop quickly while maintaining flexibility. Results of the project will be shared at a symposium and in research articles. The inter- and transdisciplinarity brought students from many different programs and levels together which improved collaborative skills and the manuscripts being developed by several teams represent a scientific contribution as a result. The many lessons learned in this program of the project will be put to use in next programs.ReferencesMcGregor, S. L. T. (2017). Transdisciplinary pedagogy in higher education: transdisciplinary learning, learning cycles and habits of minds. Chem, Switzerland: Springer.Romme, A. G. L., & van Witteloostuijn, A. (1999). Circular organizing and triple loop learning. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 12(5), 439-453. doi:https://doi.org/10.1108/09534819910289110Wick, S., Decker, M., Matthes, D., & Wright, R. (2013). IBI series winner. Students propose genetic solutions to societal problems. Science, 341(6153), 1467-1468. doi:341/6153/1467 [pii]10.1126/science.1230002

The Corona Research Super Project: A Virtual Transdisciplinary Research Project

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The Corona Research Super Project: A Virtual Transdisciplinary Research Project

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