“Breaking the rules”: A reflective processual analysis of multidisciplinary academic collaboration.

Abstract

Three academics from different fields collaborated on a study in which we reflected on our group involvement. Although we originally worked together to provide our different perspectives on how to use debates in online courses, we found that our multidisciplinary collaboration evolved into self-study as we each wrote narratives about our own participation which we then discussed and interpreted from our unique perspectives. Despite the fact that our members consisted of someone from nursing, someone from business, and someone in psychology, we all agreed that we engaged in a successful collaboration, as assessed by our desire to work together again and by the joint publication of an article. This paper presents our individual and collective interpretations of our attempts to understand why we were successful in this project, even though we did not follow most of the principles of multidisciplinary collaboration, nor of the usual conventions of our respective disciplines.