Research-Practice Partnerships in Higher Education: Developing Tools to Mediate Collaboration Between Stakeholders

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: Research Methodologies for Collaboration in the Learning Sciences

Abstract

Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships (RPP) are transactional approaches to collaboration (co-design) and joint work among researchers and organizational stakeholders. Tools (boundary tools) mediate this work, allowing participants to work across the boundaries between different traditions, which, in the process, generate new practices (boundary practices). This paper reports on research involving a RPP team’s development of boundary tools aimed at promoting collaboration among stakeholders and, more importantly, the scaling of new teaching practices in higher education– i.e., student-centred evidence-based instruction. Using Design-Based-Research (DRB) methods, we document the development of the tools and the expansion of the stakeholder activity systems involved in taking up new teaching practices. This study adds to the understanding of co-design processes and how tools facilitate organizational development.

Authors

• Elizabeth S. Charles, Dawson College

• Robert Cassidy

• Michael Dugdale, John Abbott College

• Chris Whittaker, Dawson College

• Jeremie Choquette, McGill University

• James D. Slotta, University of Toronto

• Alain Breuleux, McGill University