Module Information
Module Identifier
PSM0520
Module Title
Transdisciplinary Dialogue
Academic Year
2025/2026
Co-ordinator
Semester
Semester 2
Reading List
Other Staff
Course Delivery
Assessment
| Assessment Type | Assessment length / details | Proportion |
|---|---|---|
| Semester Assessment | Poster Presentation 1000 Words | 20% |
| Semester Assessment | Written Report 4000 Words | 80% |
| Supplementary Assessment | Poster Presentation 1000 Words | 20% |
| Supplementary Assessment | Written Report 4000 Words | 80% |
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module students should be able to:
Describe a process of organisation and issue engagement which recognises the role of bias and diversity in behaviour change.
Co-produce behaviourally informed transdisciplinary solutions to organisational challenges.
Critically review and apply behavioural insights literature to the design of a knowledge translation exercise.
Communicate an application of theory and research to an academic and non-academic audience.
Brief description
This module will bring together students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to unite in a series of shared problem-solving tasks; the importance of transdisciplinary dialogue to the co-creation of impactful solutions in complex systems will be established theoretically and experientially.
Stakeholders from a range of organisations will contribute a series of guest lectures and pose challenges that they need behavioural insights from our students to help solve. Prior to this, students will engage with the theoretical, philosophical, pedagogical, and practical foundations on which to build their solutions. Knowledge that is being developed in the simultaneous core modules will feed into this work.
Stakeholders from a range of organisations will contribute a series of guest lectures and pose challenges that they need behavioural insights from our students to help solve. Prior to this, students will engage with the theoretical, philosophical, pedagogical, and practical foundations on which to build their solutions. Knowledge that is being developed in the simultaneous core modules will feed into this work.
Content
For illustrative purposes:
• Context and scene-setting: Rationalising the focus on dialogue, collaborative working, and the “transdisciplinary” aspect (including critical interrogation of case studies from the literature).
• Understanding the foundations of knowledge co-production: Awareness of one’s biases and cognitive limitations, and organisational factors that influence collaborative working (e.g., diversity, systemic practices, policy and priorities, trust and ‘psychological safety’).
• Skill development: Theories and frameworks that facilitate dialogue, collaborative problem-solving, and knowledge co-production, with corresponding practical guidance for students to use in the co-production seminars and associated coursework.
• A focus on research methods that align with the philosophy of dialogue and knowledge co-production.
• Guest lectures and challenge-setting; group-work seminars and follow-up homework where solutions are co-produced in small groups and shared with the wider class. Students will thus appraise the quality of their classmates’ solutions.
• Context and scene-setting: Rationalising the focus on dialogue, collaborative working, and the “transdisciplinary” aspect (including critical interrogation of case studies from the literature).
• Understanding the foundations of knowledge co-production: Awareness of one’s biases and cognitive limitations, and organisational factors that influence collaborative working (e.g., diversity, systemic practices, policy and priorities, trust and ‘psychological safety’).
• Skill development: Theories and frameworks that facilitate dialogue, collaborative problem-solving, and knowledge co-production, with corresponding practical guidance for students to use in the co-production seminars and associated coursework.
• A focus on research methods that align with the philosophy of dialogue and knowledge co-production.
• Guest lectures and challenge-setting; group-work seminars and follow-up homework where solutions are co-produced in small groups and shared with the wider class. Students will thus appraise the quality of their classmates’ solutions.
Module Skills
| Skills Type | Skills details |
|---|---|
| Adaptability and resilience | Feedback on weekly tasks, in-class discussions and the collaborative nature of the module are intended to engender adaptability and resilience. “Low-stakes” formative work and practice presentations will be completed throughout the semester to build students’ self-efficacy up ready for the summative assessments; feedback will be geared towards engendering adaptability and resilience, not just enhanced academic skills. |
| Co-ordinating with others | The module is based on a collaborative philosophy and will model the importance and good practice of coordination. Students will be expected to contribute effectively to the planning of and play an active part in group activities. |
| Creative Problem Solving | Each week will bring the opportunity to engage in creative transdisciplinary problem solving. |
| Critical and analytical thinking | The realities of the context in question and the individuals concerned will need to be weighed against what the literature suggests could work. |
| Digital capability | Online literature search and synthesis of digitally available literature. Use of social media to draw a picture of the ways that the subject is discussed on public forums. Use of a collaborative cloud space to facilitate sharing of resources and work (OneNote Class Notebook / MS Teams / Blackboard). Use of poster creation software. |
| Professional communication | Students will engage with external stakeholders on a weekly basis and their coursework will be assessed by these stakeholders. For example, in any given week, once a guest lecturer has presented their context and posed related challenges, the students will be able to ask questions to gain insights to help them create a solution. |
| Real world sense | All dialogue activities will help students develop empathy (taking the perspective of others and reconciling it with their own), and place their thinking in a wider context (transdisciplinarity). |
| Reflection | Reflection on one’s personal opinions, biases, communication styles, and more, is inherent in the dialogue tradition and will be nurtured in this module through the weekly schedule of activities. |
| Subject Specific Skills | Students will have the opportunity to develop a wide range of subject specific skills that will help them to understand, conceptualise and evaluate examples and research publications presented on the module. For example: Assessment of scientific methods in dialogue; Differentiation between research methodologies and when to use each one; Demonstration of a familiarity with the techniques required for literature searches; etc. |
Notes
This module is at CQFW Level 7