Communication tools and their support for integration in transdisciplinary research projects

Abstract

This study investigated how different communication tools support integration in transdisciplinary research. Ten digital and analogue tools with different communication directions and degrees of participation were tested in a 3.5-year transdisciplinary research project. Based on an exploratory operationalisation of the social-organisational, cognitive-epistemic and communicative dimensions of integration, we compared the tools’ integration support as perceived by 80 practitioners, 6 scientists and 3 integration experts. The multi-methods approach involved three surveys at different project phases, an ex-post poster assessment and interviews. The study showed that a variety of tools can serve diverse actors’ needs with varying preconditions and can play a supportive role for integration. Throughout the research process, the project website was identified as the central information platform for all groups. A living document in the form of a large hand-drawn poster and sketchnotes provided quick and understandable overviews and were particularly relevant for the communicative and the social-organisational dimension of integration. Digital videoconferences performed best in the cognitive-epistemic dimension and were found to be effective for information exchange, while online voting, emails and minutes were perceived to be less relevant. The involvement of integration experts with diverse communication and visualisation skills can support adaptive, context-specific and dynamic choices of communication tools, making project outcomes accessible to a variety of actors in a timely and transparent way throughout the project. The communication tools that were perceived by the actors to be most supportive were those that used visual and textual sign systems and facilitated a strong group identity. Therefore, we conclude that future research should include and operationalise a fourth, emotional dimension of integration.