Feedback from Dialogue Labs

The Dialogue: Means and Outcomes

At the start of the session the 3 recipients of the encouragement awards for the posters judged most successful in stimulating dialogue between participants were announced.

Feedback from dialogue lab moderators

Not all moderators were able to be present to give feedback on their sessions; however additional notes on the sessions, prepared by the young scientists who assisted the moderators may become available on this site at a later date. A document describing the planned format of the workshop on dialogue between WKD and the Science and Technology in Society Forum, moderated by Reiko Kuroda, can be downloaded here.

Karuvannur P. Mohanan - Collaborative behaviour, altruism and conflict: a test ground to experiment dialogue
Professor Mohanan described how his personal experience of the workshop he moderated had led to his perception of a conflict between attitudes that could be said to have circulated within the group as a unit - disdain on the one hand and hostility on the other. - As a group, the participants had been confronted with the question of how to resolve this conflict: which led to a debate on the subject. If the group not arrive at unanimous agreement on what was important to tackle first, after a fiery start to the debate, they had shown encouraging signs of arriving at a consensus on the need to give time and space throughout any attempt at dialogue, to clarifying terms and finding shared meaning. What may appear obvious to one's own brain/mind/heart/intuition, may not appear obvious to the other and each of us might benefit him or herself by learning to respect and value that difference more.

Ulrike Felt - Responsibility and governance of the university - cooperation between science and society
Professor Felt expressed the sentiment that her session had not managed to address the issue of responsibility directly. She said she felt "that this problem was, as throughout the conference, dealt with by shifting it elsewhere". There had been some discussion of risk governance and the critical time factor involved in taking complex "real life" decisions on the basis of partial, dirty or otherwise less-than-perfect, information. Concerning the application of knowledge in society, and identifying some of the problems of disseminating knowledge to the wider audience, Prof. Felt was moved to quote a remark by two experts in communication theory; Nisbet and Scheufele, who stated "facts never speak for themselves, but scientists speak for them".

Julia Higgins - Abstracts
The discussion prompted by several of the abstracts focused on the overarching theme of how to promote transdisciplinary dialogue within a general strategy for education policy. The other abstracts in the session served as specific examples to illustrate the variety of transdiciplinary approaches and issues encountered by those working on particular problems. Several participants in the workshop had made the observation that industry has been taking this cross-cutting approach for years. For Professor Higgins, the priority challenges lie in bringing people from diverse backgrounds together, educating people, both to believe trans-disciplinary dialogue is possible and to feel it is worth making the effort to understand each other - as sometimes even apparently simple words acquire subtly different meanings in the context of different disciplines. Professor Higgins considered that the workshop title, "abstracts", had initially posed her and co-moderator Michael Alhadeff-Jones some challenges in planning how to structure their session. However she said both the loosely defined nature of the title, and the relatively small number of participants who attended, had ultimately facilitated debate. She suggested this is something to be reconsidered when planning the logistics of dialogue labs in future, but recognised that many other practical considerations have also to be taken into account.

Georges Haddad - Trans-disciplinary networks and knowledge sharing in universities
This workshop discussed the  trans-disciplinary approach from a Humanistic perspective. Mr Haddad suggested that the WKD initiative could be better resumed as more of a 'spirit' - requiring the capacity to understand, to be receptive and to give - than as a combination of disciplines or approaches. He said that he conceived transdisciplinarity not as an overarching discipline, but more as a manner of being. He suggested that to make progress in learning to lower their personal barriers to communication at will, individuals in general, might benefit from adopting this way of thinking.

Deborah Egloff, MIT (for Henry Markram ) - Networks and Intelligence
The Young Scientist (a musician and sound engineer by training) reported that her group had attempted to define what was meant by intelligence and held a discussion about what each party understood by "knowledge" versus "information". A consensus message which emerged from their discussion might be resumed as "networks promote better access to information, and offer us an opportunity to improve, but do not inherently make us better scientists". The group also considered the question of whether knowledge can be said to increase in a collective environment. There had been a discussion about the shift that has occurred with modern technology in relation to the age barrier. Egloff said "A bottom up process of learning is indeed taking place, in the sense that it is often now the young who are teaching their parents the practical aspects of using new technology". But, she added "we adults still have the responsibility to ensure that our children grasp an understanding of the broader meaning of learning.

Feedback from young scientists

The young scientists declared the World Knowledge Dialogue (WKD) to be a worthy exercise that had challenged and expanded the limits of their knowledge. They expressed the opinion that their WKD experience had created open spaces for learning by putting them outside of their 'comfort zone'. The opportunity to interact with other participants and listen to speakers at the conference was greatly appreciated and they expressed approval of the WKD philosophy of accepting to step outside your personal area of expertise. They acknowledged that a necessary pre-condition for the WKD is the ability to put aside one's own prejudices, superiority/inferiority complexes and adherence to a particular belief or discipline. They also reiterated the importance of genuine humility among participants in facilitating a reciprocally satisfying dialogue between them. They underligned that conscious, subconscious or unconscious attempts to safeguard or promote one's own career or reputation through WKD participation, carry the risk of opposing the attainment of humility.

Whilst acknowledging that a considerable collective effort must have gone into bringing WKD to its current form, the young scientists' spokespersons also expressed these concerns:

·          One pointed out that the number of participants from Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Eastern Europe, was unacceptably low, and brought into question the validity of the banner title to which the "World" Knowledge Dialogue initiative aspires.

·          One suggested that a more focused approach was needed to address such specific issues as how to educate students to engage in dialogue across disciplines.

·          Several expressed frustration that overall dialogue was not sufficiently forthcoming to satisfy the expectations they had held prior to the symposium.

·          Another reflected that many "parallel" inter-disciplinary, multi-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary issues do not seem to manifest themselves as such problems in the world outside of academia.

·          A young mathematician regretted that his discipline was not well represented at WKD and expressed the opinion that mathematics has a far more universal application to solving problems than is widely recognized.

There appeared to be consensus among the Young Scientists that the practical application of WKD was not sufficiently defined. They recommended that the WKD become more goal-orientated, with clearly defined objectives looking at both what needs to be brought to the debate - collectively and individually - and what action points should be taken away by participants. More specific suggestions as to the goals each has in mind, but did not articulate, will no doubt emerge in the fullness of time after a longer period of reflection, introspection and continued exchanges between participants who choose to continue communicating with one another.

Young scientists (and students) expressed the desire that these groups become more involved in the planning and preparation stages for subsequent WKD events in addition to their current roles in networking with peers and mentors, and in sharing their impressions at the end of th symposium. Despite their many criticisms, as a group, the young scientists seemed enthusiastic about the great potential the WKD held, if as one said "we open up our minds and welcome information".

Feedback from students

The students found the WKD to be both a personal opportunity and a stimulating, interesting experience, but with some reservations. Much of their feedback concurred with that of the young scientists. One described the WKD as "a kitchen with all the ingredients, but that can't come up with a delicious cake." A message, hammered home by more than one student, was that while distinguished individuals and respected figures are essential ingredients in the "delicious cake" recipe, it will take much more than the presence of a lot of distinguished individuals for the initiative to reach the status of a World Knowledge Dialogue. There was pragmatic recognition that the project was a 'moon shot' and that the "dirty works" approach is a better way to get started than doing nothing at all, but the conference did not live up to the expectations of some students insofar as :

(W)Worldwide representation was not balanced at the conference
(K) Knowledge was dominated by natural sciences and
(D) Dialogue was largely perceived as intellectual networking between various disciplines

However, there was also recognition that WKD's "spirit" had pervaded more than the confines of the official conference sessions themselves.

The importance of humility (in the sense of unpretentious, modest), in terms of effective dialogue was also raised by the students. They expressed a wish for more effective communication on the part of other participants and called for more participants and speakers who had an admirable capacity to listen as well as an admirable capacity to express their own opinions. The students reminded us that the building blocks of dialogue between the disciplines are generated at the level of dialogue between individual human beings; Dialogue is not merely some abstract discipline or concept. They also considered that there is a need for more application of dialogue in institutions of learning. There was a suggestion that a cross-disciplinary coaching/mentor system might be useful, echoing a similar refrain in a WKD 2006 presentation by Ian Hacking, who had mentioned his own experience of initiating a small pilot experiment in this direction.

Students felt the absence of a clear conclusion or outreach to be frustrating; what is our role as participants and what steps have we achieved, they demanded of the audience and the organisers?  The students considered that they had a lot to offer the dialogue and felt motivated to pursue the venture, recognising that they needed the authority and support of the "established" intellectual community to carry their own messages forward into the world.