Social Lives
Author: Dr Nicola Mountford, Assistant Professor, School of Business, Maynooth University
Opening Doors is a collaborative, interdisciplinary, intersectoral and international learning experience for early career researchers in Open Science and Open Innovation – applicable to all academic disciplines. As the project to develop and pilot this learning experience draws to a close, I reflect on my own learning experience as one of the principal investigators within the consortium.
Opening Doors, is an EU-funded co-ordination action aimed to research and develop a learning experience and networking opportunity for early career researchers using open, online resources. Specifically, our proposal said that we would focus on open science and open innovation. The first time our consortium met – Maynooth University (MU), Aarhus University (Denmark), the National Training Fund (Czech Republic), and UCD (Lead) – we spent a surprising amount of time discussing what open science and open innovation meant to the various partners. Coming from the School of Business, I had a good sense of what was meant by open innovation – as Chesbrough put it, “a more distributed, more participatory, more decentralized approach to innovation”. When it came to defining open science, however, I struggled. Following the definition of open innovation, open science presumably indicated a more distributed, more participatory, more decentralized approach to science. But, when we speak of open innovation, we tend to see industry-based innovators reaching into academia and across the general public. Open science seemed to require that we academics return the favour.
While my own teaching and research has naturally veered towards external engagement, I wasn’t sure whether this counted as ‘open science’. Didn’t that mean publishing study designs in advance, sharing data, publishing open access? Well, yes – but it turns out that those logistical elements are somewhat easier to capture as learning outcomes and deliver in a well-designed programme. The real key to open science, how to work with a non-academic partner, was a little more difficult to teach. The consortium ran co-design workshops to help us to understand how to teach this. Students, PhD employers, education experts, ethics experts and others all came together to discuss the challenge – and they came to one conclusion. The only way to teach this effectively was through doing – the students on this open science and open innovation programme would need to directly engage with a non-academic partner, work to understand their challenges and goals, and co-design, with them, a research project that would help. Projects included an examination of policy trends and infrastructural influences that might help or hinder the development and adoption of a service innovation; a data-oriented approach to the attraction of talent to a region; and the design of smart collaboration processes for a consulting firm.
Students worked in groups with external partners on a specific challenge. The students struggled to define the real question that needed to be answered. They went back and forth on methodologies that could combine the rigour we scientists required, with the timeframes that our external partners needed to meet. They worked in interdisciplinary teams and realised that perspectives on method, rigour and the meaning and value of knowledge could not be taken for granted. Over a four-week period these students learned both the challenges and the value of working across boundaries to solve real-world problems.
As the module drew to a close, students reflected on their learning:
“I’m really happy about deciding to participate in this course. It was slightly different to what I was expecting at the beginning. But different good. I met interesting people, learned new approaches, practised useful skills, was introduced to new tools, and had overall a great time. At the end I felt satisfaction about accomplishing something and meeting people who I can hopefully collaborate with in future. Totally worth it!”
“I appreciate how different profiles can contribute to the same project. I consider the different perspectives to be rewarding for developing ideas for how a project can achieve goals. I have discovered new aspects of an otherwise familiar field that have emerged in the collaboration. These discoveries will shape my further process. I have tried this process once before – with great success. And I will embrace this form of collaboration again in the future.”
The Assisting Living and Learning (ALL) Institute works across disciplines and sectors, collaborating with civil society, policy makers, industry, intergovernmental organizations, United Nations agencies and most individuals to empower people and enhance their quality of life. To contribute meaningfully to assisting living and learning researchers must cross boundaries of all sorts, embracing and engaging in open science approaches. Opening Doors is just one project in an EU funded suite of projects, all aiming to revolutionise the PhD training process with one goal in mind: to empower researchers to span boundaries in order to address SDG goals. I hope that through my involvement in two of these projects (Opening Doors, and CHAMELEONS) I have begun a ripple effect that will last long after these projects end.
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