CCES Winter School 2014
CCES received more high quality applications for the fourth run of the CCES Winter School “Science Meets Practice” than available spots. The selection was competitive and finally 23 participants attended the CCES Winter School 2014. Based on the experiences of the previous Winter Schools, new formats and contents have been developed for this successful transferrable skills course. The revised program offered a unique mix of knowledge sharing and peer exchange, conceptual inputs directly applicable to own research projects, communication and knowledge management training, organization of and exposure to real stakeholder interactions, and room for creativity and reflection about the interplay between science and society and about the various roles that scientists can play in the science-practice interface. The Winter School was again organized by the Competence Center Environment and Sustainability CCES of the ETH Domain who gratefully acknowledges the continuous financial support from the SUK Doctoral Program and the ETH Zurich Rectorate.
Science-practice dialogues
After learning about the foundations of the ways of how to manage knowledge interfaces and enhancing knowledge sharing against the background of their individual projects, the participants applied the conceptual insights and organized nearly real-life situations with real stakeholders. Stakeholders from public administration, private organizations and companies as well as from the local public accepted invitations to attend science-practice interactions on the topic "the World Food System".
Focus group
Food is a topic that is a concern of everybody and so the focus group with local people representing the civil society allowed the collection of views and perspectives on food consumption patterns and food waste. The focus group is a data collection and learning tool. The CCES Winter School participants learnt how to organize and implement this consultative form of dialogue at the science-practice interface. The communications team prepared a Download “Focus Group Fact Sheet” (in German) (PDF, 569 KB) as information for the stakeholders.
Accompanying group
Co-production of knowledge means that researchers and societal actors jointly develop new knowledge on a given issue. This can take place at the beginning of a research project, when problem framing has priority, or during any other stage of a research project. One method to achieve co-production of knowledge is to establish and to moderate an accompanying group with heterogeneous stakeholders, i.e. representatives of the civil society, the public, the private and the academic sector. This group also serves as a platform to deal with their potentially conflicting interests. The moderation of the interactions within this group is crucial for outcomes and results. The CCES Winter School participants structured the science-practice interaction with a set of tools which they creatively applied and learnt how to deal with different types of knowledge and to facilitate discussion with different types of personalities. The communications team prepared the Download “Accompanying Group Fact Sheet” (in German) (PDF, 996 KB).
Panel meeting
The Panel meeting was the third science-practice interaction of the CCES Winter School 2014. The participants presented the results from the focus group and accompanying group to three experts from administration, private sector and media. Our guests were Prof. Dr. Bernard Lehmann, Dr. Sybil Anwander, and Dr. Katharina Bochsler. Together they experienced what it means to prepare and moderate a panel discussion and that it is quite challenging to stay focused while providing enough room for the panelists’ views as well as for questions from the audience.