THE IMPACT OF MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL COLLABORATIONS BETWEEN PHYSICAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENTISTS (Invited Presentation)

My journey towards understanding the importance of collaborations between physical scientists and behavioral scientists began when Miami University commissioned a Community of Practice on Engaged Learning in 2008, which was designed to enable a wide variety of campus staff to work together on increasing student engagement in their learning. During this two-year journey, collaborations with behavioral scientists helped elucidate the importance of establishing and promoting student development outcomes in physical science courses to switch more successfully to flipped classrooms and student-centered learning. This experience motivated subsequent participation in the GET-SPATIAL Science of Learning Collaborative Network. Cognitive psychologists, education researchers, and geoscience educators worked closely to create a trading zone where physical science training experiences were used to advance education and cognitive psychology research of spatial thinking. This worked to create truly collaborative interdisciplinary research projects, with publications describing 1) the limited impact of seismology visualization outreach due to the excessive cognitive load and 2) the importance of identifying student misconceptions associated with the elastic rebound theory of earthquakes and directly addressing them in instruction. It also led to follow-up funding from the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program that identified the difficulties in communicating key seismology concepts and scientific uncertainty in information products available to the public immediately after an earthquake. However, the impact of the collaborative network has gone well beyond these specific projects because it has inspired inclusion of collaborative research strategies and communities of practice into a large-scale, community-driven, geoscience research initiative. The Subduction Zones in 4-Dimensions (SZ4D) research coordination network built a Building Equity and Capacity with Geoscience integrative group that has led SZ4D to embrace the Collective Impact model established in behavioral science work. Although SZ4D is still in the catalyst phase, there are specific efforts designed to make physical and behavioral science collaborations more common and mutually beneficial.