October 2015, Sawsan Khuri and Stefan Wuchty
With collaborative research on the increase, it is time to get this pioneering team science curriculum out of hiding.
In 2014, the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Miami in Florida, USA, established the Da Vinci programme for undergraduate students taking a double major BA/BSc degree programme comprised of an arts subject and a science subject.
One of the elective courses (modules in the UK) that was exclusive to this group of students was U-Inspire, the first full semester, 3-credit (equivalent to 15 credits in the UK) undergraduate education provision on collaborative working aimed specifically at science students.
Wanting to help anyone wishing to run a similar course, Sawsan and Stefan wrote a blog and made all their materials available on the United States of America NIH’s Team Science Toolkit in 2015. Since then the Toolkit has been decommissioned and the work has been unavailable.
Sawsan has now co-authored a book with L. Michelle Bennett and Howard Gadlin on How to Succeed at Collaborative Research, available to pre-order at this link from Bristol University Press, and authored a book on Doing Interdisciplinary Research with Sage Publishing due to be released in late 2026.
It is time for U-Inspire to continue inspiring others.
Click on the links below for the blog and supplementary materials. All feedback welcome.
Training Undergraduates in Cross-Disciplinary Team Science
Supplementary Material includes the week by week syllabus and assessment briefs used in 2014 and in 2015.
We would love for you to use these materials, and when you do please let us know and remember to cite us.
The full citation is: Khuri S and Wuchty S, 2015, Training Undergraduates in Cross-Disciplinary Team Science, blog for the Team Science Toolkit now available from Collaborative Capacities.
