BC4ECO - Using Visual Tools for a Shared Understanding and Pedagogical Approach across an Interdisciplinary Consortium

Abstract

Effective communication is crucial when working on complex or wicked problems in interdisciplinary, international teams. Developing a shared understanding of critical concepts and aligning knowledge, focus, and resources can be problematic when stakeholders speak different languages, span several disciplines and work within different national or industry-based norms. Using visual tools to represent critical concepts and their relations, and map out our strategic goals has greatly helped combat such issues. This paper recounts the use and impact of adopting visual tools within the transnational and interdisciplinary collaborative environment in the BC4ECO project's international consortium. The Miro Board and the canvas approach greatly helped represent, visualise, and thus concretise the structure and contents of our collaboration, which takes place within a 3 years ERASMUS+ framework that builds and delivers Summer School, MOOCS as well as teacher and multiplier events about harnessing the potential of Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) for environmental sustainability. As the materials and MOOCS are expected to become Open Education Resources and have a wide impact, it is particularly crucial to get the contents as well as the pedagogy right, in spite of the team's differences in almost any dimension of background and culture.