Teaching Open Science

Question

Dear all,

we are currently developing an open science seminar. The aim is to teach the idea and methods of open science to an interdisciplinary audience of students. In the discussion among our (also interdisciplinary) team, we felt that the practice of open science differs significantly between disciplines (cs, biotechnology, sociology, psychology, etc.).

We have asked ourselves: Is it even possible or advisable to teach open science interdisciplinarily (is that a word?). Then again, if the understanding of what is open science differs so vastly, maybe it would be a good thing to have students learn the basics together, so that the next generation can build upon a common understanding.

What are your interdisciplinary experiences and thoughts? Are the differences a problem, a challenge or a chance? Or maybe they are virtual, i.e. we see differences where there are none or where they are negligible?

We have decided to pursue our interdisciplinary approach and I am excited to see where it leads us…

Comments

Andreas replies on Mastodon:

"Too lazy to make an account there - my take is that practices and  methodology will be *very* different across disciplines. (Example: I don't see much benefit and [a lot of potential harm for exploitation of results] of publishing study details before a study in my community). Though there is probably elements which all (? or at least a number of?) disciplines share. If it possible to identify such elements across an interdisciplinary group, it may also be worth teaching those." https://scicomm.xyz/@the_passivist/106914886153627863

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I have no experience teaching Open Science beyond a short talk at working group seminars.

The better a class fits to the background of the audience the better a class will naturally be. But it is also more work and you may have to appeal to broader audiences to get a critical mass. Some topics, like Open Access or Open Review, will be pretty universal, at least in the natural sciences, others, like reproducibility or Open Lab Protocols, more discipline specific.

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Thank you for your answers. Reflecting on the different fields of open science regarding their potential for interdisciplinary teaching with an interdisciplinary team of lecturers is a good approach.

There is also the idea of a consecutive practice seminar which will be much mor discipline specific, so we can possibly discuss some fields of open science there more intensively.