Collaborative learning is a teaching method that brings together students to discuss a topic important for a given course or curriculum and solve a related problem or create a product. By doing this, learners create knowledge together and gain 21^st –century skills such as communication, critical thinking, decision making, leadership and conflict management. Universities had to close their campuses and turn their education fully online in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which created a forced step in the evolution of the digitalisation of collaborative teaching. How did TU Delft face this challenge? How did the students experience the online version of collaborative learning? How did distant learning affect their motivation? This article presents four student team projects investigating these questions from the collaborative learning perspective. One of the significant findings of these projects is the lack of socio-emotional interactions during online collaborative work. We present a few guidelines on how to enable these interactions when designing online or blended collaborative education. ... Read more

Blockchain emerged as a well-defined technological object with limited applicability applications (e.g. Bitcoin). Embraced by more and more ‘stakeholders’, Blockchain has turned into a bounty of possibilities and promises. This raises the question whether Blockchain is turning into an overextending, affective ‘hyperobject’. Adopting a post-ANT topological perspective, and using mixed-methods analysis, this paper traces Blockchain's recent developments in the Netherlands. A media analysis of newspaper items shows a telling divide between stakeholders (including incumbents) stressing Blockchain's radicalising prospects and those (notably involved knowledge and policy workers) warning of its overhyping and lack of governance capacities. A detailed analysis of strategies and operations of the key enabler, the Dutch Blockchain Coalition, reveals how much effort has gone into face-to-face encounters and communication to frame and script the object. Yet, this also causes Blockchain to proliferate in all kinds of directions, turning into a hyperobject beyond the reach of intellectual and practical grasp. ... Read more

The challenges of our modern world are getting more and more multi-dimensional, integrating not only technological but social, environmental and politically sensitive issues. The complexity of these problems requires the involvement of multiple actors in the research and innovation processes, the engagement of scientists with non-scientists by bridging disciplinary and sector-based boundaries.

The collaborating partners share their human capital, risk and resources, join complementary skills and capacities in the course of joint work. These collaborations, often called as collaborative networks create new expectations, alter roles and shift communication practices for its members. The partners have to adjust to new social, organizational and management settings and adapt to the new collaboration-facilitating technologies. Organizations that lack the ability to share and collaborate have a huge potential to resist these adjustments and adaptation processes and limit the effectiveness of the collaboration as a whole. This could lead to the failure of the join work.

We claim that next to the technology readiness levels, collaboration readiness levels of research teams, organizations or companies can be measured and needs to be used within innovation processes. Much has been studied regarding the success factors of collaborations, or the collaboration readiness of distinct partners working together, but still, the evaluation of such collaborations are yet done at the last phase and are generally based on the number of produced research publications and patents. Our goal is to build a Collaboration Readiness framework that can be used to measure the collaborative status of collaborative networks even during their formation to support them in reaching their utmost potential.

Blockchain, the distributed ledger technology is a disruptive innovation, with potential uses in healthcare, food industry, energy, smart industry, logistics, and government. Blockchain entails an entirely new way of identification, transacting, trading and regulation. Blockchain is best seen as a technology that is co-created with multiple stakeholders. The heterogeneity of the actors involved in its development implies that these stakeholders are likely to have very different backgrounds and interests and as a result, they are also likely to have very different understandings of Blockchain regarding (for example) what it is and what it should do. This can both hamper collaboration among these stakeholders and reduce widespread support for Blockchain.

A pilot study was performed on the Dutch Blockchain Coalition in 2017 to map how different internal stakeholders collaborate, how they perceive the technology, how they reach out, and how these issues could determine the success of Blockchain innovations. The aim of the pilot study was dual. First, to check the theoretical framework of collaboration readiness generated by the authors based on theoretical input as the first step in the design-based research approach. The results of the pilot were used to give feedback on issues that should be changed by the coalition to become more effective. The report on our findings was used to implement several organizational changes. This presentation summarizes the collaboration readiness framework, the pilot research, and draws the silhouette of the further research. ... Read more

In this paper, we present a vision on how engineers can play different roles in future society 2030. First we predicted how society in the Netherlands (in relation to Europe and the rest of the world) is going to develop and how future engineers will behave, act and take their position in this future world. We used the ‘Vision in Design’ methodology to unravel the complexity of future society step-by-step and to understand the diversity of engineer(ing)-behaviour: 260 relevant future conditions for 2030 were derived from 10 interviews with visionaries in society, experts in the field of engineering education and from literature search. Clustering these factors into ten driving forces helped us to discover three independent determining dimensions, defining eight possible engineer-behaviours in 2030. As a result of this rich contextual research, these eight roles are further illustrated with accompanying skills and pathways to support role development. The vision and roles have been developed in co-creation and validated in a series of workshops with a wide variety of people within and beyond academia and within the professional world of engineering. ... Read more

Citizen science and particularly mobile crowd sourcing (MCS) has large potential in water resources management for data collection and awareness raising. Concerns about data quality, and initiating and sustaining citizen involvement hamper incorporation of citizen science in water monitoring, together with a lack of practical guidance how to set up citizen science monitoring programs. This review presents an overview of key success factors for citizen science including MCS. Specific attention is paid to motivational aspects. Success factors were organized according to project phase and motivations according to self-determination theory. The presented overviews provide practical guidelines for setting up citizen science projects. WIREs Water 2017, 4:e1218. doi: 10.1002/wat2.1218 ... Read more

In recent years, governmental institutes have started to use citizen science as a form of public participation. The Dutch water authorities are among them. They face pressure on the water governance system and a water awareness gap among the general public, and consider citizen science a possible solution. The reasons for practitioners to engage in citizen science, and in particular those of government practitioners, have seldom been studied. This article aims to pinpoint the various viewpoints of practitioners at Dutch regional water authorities on citizen science. A Q-methodological approach was used because it allows for exploration of viewpoints and statistical analysis using a small sample size. Practitioners (33) at eight different water authorities ranked 46 statements from agree to disagree. Three viewpoints were identified with a total explained variance of 67 %. Viewpoint A considers citizen science a potential solution that can serve several purposes, thereby encouraging citizen participation in data collection and analysis. Viewpoint B considers citizen science a method for additional, illustrative data. Viewpoint C views citizen science primarily as a means of education. These viewpoints show water practitioners in the Netherlands are willing to embrace citizen science at water authorities, although there is no support for higher levels of citizen engagement. ... Read more

Solving publicly important issues asks for the development of socio-technical approaches, which demands collaboration between researchers with different perspectives, values, and interests. In these complex interdisciplinary collaborations, the course of communication is of utmost importance, including the moments when people, consciously or not, keep silent. In 2012, an interdisciplinary group of water management engineers and scientists collaborated to explore how the university's separate water management research fields could fit better in today's socio-technical trends. Studying the interactional process revealed that during the collaboration many issues were not said by various parties at various times. Results show that, in particular, engineers and scientists stayed silent to secure group performance, to keep disagreements from surfacing, and manage conflicts of interest in the bargaining process. Although silence served various interactional functions, it also shaped the course of interaction in ways that were not intended, resulting in the development of a latent conflict. It is concluded that the concept of silence adds a relevant dimension to our understanding of interaction among engineers and scientists participating in interdisciplinary collaboration that is currently absent in existing literature on scientific collaboration. ... Read more

Dutch water management is considered highly efficient, but it faces a lack of public awareness and other certain physical challenges. One proposed strategy to deal with these challenges includes increasing citizen participation and citizen science using mobile devices in particular. Such mobile crowd sensing (MCS) can be used to enhance canal operations and model predictive control (MPC) by nonexperts. The data collector often pushes implementations, and little knowledge and experience from the field of product design is used. This can lead to underperformance both with regards to the technology and the volunteer citizens. This study uses an adapted Technology Acceptance Model 3 (TAM3) to survey Dutch citizens’ intentions while operating a mock-up smartphone application to identify key drivers of their acceptance in an early design phase. Included among the important drivers of citizens’ behavioral intentions (BI) are usefulness, relevance to the task, and the demonstrability of benefits. These insights can possibly unveil validated design criteria for future MCS applications. Such validated criteria can not only prevent the underperformance of citizen science from a volunteer point of view, but it can also affect the performance of the MCS as well. ... Read more

The central issue of this chapter are the challenges of innovation in science and technology education and science and technology communication practice, and how design thinking is supportive to attain these challenges. What is the drama? Many professionals in both domains would like to improve their practice. ... Read more

Much of science communication is peer-to-peer communication in collaborative networks for innovation from the fuzzy front-end of innovation until the marketing back-end. Scientists and engineers at meetings tables talking about new developments. Or scientists and engineers in collaboration with industry and policy makers, discussing various scenarios for implementation of e.g. health care services. However, this focus on science communication 'within the action' of uncertain development of science and technology and its attached academic domains such as innovation studies, high-tech marketing and branding, is not often discussed in the science communication literature. Lacking these considerations at this micro-level communication, means we have an incomplete picture of the ways that discourses develop and are shaped by actors, particularly during the upstream phases of innovation. ... Read more

PhD-research is important in many scientific domains as it represents early development of new ideas and methods. So what does a 15-year record of science communication PhD-theses (2000-2015, N=164) tell us about the development of ideas and methods in this field? PhD-research, as represented in the projects on which we have gathered information, analyses the real world of science communication from many angles, e.g. scientists, the role of the media, museums, engagement, and generally in a descriptive, sometimes experiential, manner. The dominant form of research explains and understands the reality of science communication through surveys, observations and interviews. This leads us to the idea that PhD-theses tend to be ‘phenomenological’ and developments in PhD-research follow and explicate developments in science communication practice. This does not mean that the PhD-research bridges the gap between theory and practice, since systematically testing new insights in practice is
missing.
This panel session will start by explaining the phenomenological character of PhD-research in science communication. We will connect this record to other trend studies on science communication research (e.g. bibliographical). We will propose a ‘topographical research activity’ map of science communication that functions as a platform for discussion about scientific developments in science communication. The map is not intended to set a research agenda, but to make it easier for researchers, practitioners and students to reflect on developments and boundary issues.
A qualified PhD-researcher and science communication educator who has been studying trends in PhD theses (MvdS), a communication professional who is pursuing PhD research (CA), a PhD supervisor and research leader who is editor-in-chief of a science communication journal (EW), and a science communication researcher who has co-edited an anthology proposing a view of the best
in science communication studies over five decades (BT) will consider the issues arising from these observations and analyses. ... Read more

In considering the ethos of science, Robert Merton [1973] posited that openness and secrecy reflect opposing values in the accomplishment of science. According to Merton, scientific inquiry required that all interested parties have access to and freely share scientific information. In our current epoch, this importance of openness in science seems even more widely accepted. It is a given nowadays that scientists are expected to work as part of a team, not only within their own department, but also with other departments different disciplines. To work interdisciplinary scientists must become more communicative and critically talk about difference, which asks maximum transparency and open communication of the participants. However, against the adage that openness and participation in science is an inherent good, one easily forgets that the actual practice of collaborating may also require things are not said. Navigating everyday interactional challenges may depend on postponing issues to keep the process going, for instance because scientists still have to figure out what they find important in the collaboration with others. But also issues like, withholding sensitive problems or not critiquing each other's options viewpoints, leaving points shrewdly of the agenda, and excluding relevant actors from the meeting table. Despite the idea of open innovation, shared visions, beliefs and knowledge we must focus on silence for the good and the bad as well ... Read more

Differences in viewpoints between science and society, like in for example the HPV-vaccination debate, should be considered from a socio-technical system perspective, and not solely from a boundary perspective between the lay public, medical doctors and scientists. Recent developments in the HPV-vaccination case show how the debate concerning uncertainty amongst scientists and the lay audience is mostly focussed on the improvement of understanding of lay people about why vaccination is important. This boundary thinking leads to the idea that once the boundary is crossed, the problem is solved. However, such ‘bug-fixing’ and technocentric boundary thinking is not leading to sustainable resolutions. We view science communication as a key aspect of the socio-technical system of scientific, technological and innovation development, in which the vaccine and its corresponding immunisation program are socially constructed. A process of construction that takes place all the way from the fuzzy front-end of their scientific conception until the marketing back-end. The authority, legitimacy and therefore the license to operate of scientists, engineers and policy makers are discussed, primarily at this boundary, but develops during the whole process of innovation. During upstream processes, professional roles and according behaviour are also defined. In this commentary we state that the development of science communication strategies should also start upstream, and that the ‘bug-fixes’ of improved listening to (and not by) the lay audience, could be become a more sustainable solution to the HPV-debate if this process of listening by experts considers the socio-technical system of vaccination as a whole. One of the outcomes might be that the dialogue between scientists, policy makers and the lay audience is about the various possible scenarios that deal with inherent scientific and societal uncertainty in which the inevitable uncertainty of science becomes more explicit. It is not known according whether this will lead to more profound interactions, however we would like to explore this possibility a bit more from an uncertain innovation process point of view. This could clear the way for a process of co-inquiry into ideas concerning shared responsibility and accountability. The latter means that the focus in the debate is more balanced and concerns the social network, and is not purely focussed on the betterment ofunderstanding by the lay audience. Moreover, in this way we consider communication and interaction between actors not as a means of crossing any boundaries (since that may be impossible), but as a means to perturb a status quo or equilibrium within a network of actors. This makes apparent boundaries more explicit and discussable. Methods of interaction, e.g. based on concepts like midstream modulation, may lead to another discourse and give way to new dynamics in this social system. ... Read more

Barriers between experts and lay people are fading. Budget cuts and the demand for societal relevance of research induce the involvement of citizens. At the same time small, cheap sensors are widely available in mobile phones. This provides opportunities for mobile crowd sensing in water management. The fresh water demand is increasing, while several factors threaten the quantity and quality of the supply. Citizen science may enhance science by data collection, analysis or interpretation and could serve as education mean. A common challenge is ensuring sufficient quality of data. In this study the potential of citizen science in mobile crowd sensing in water quality monitoring was explored, by using a mobile crowd sensing application for water quality measurements. This consists of a colorimetric analysis using smartphone cameras and citizens to collect the data. Purposes of citizen science, target audiences, possible substances, opportunities, challenges and key success factors were identified based on nine interviews with representatives of Dutch water boards, nature managers and citizen associations. The results were compared to literature findings. ... Read more