Tiny experiments within universities?

Can we establish a culture of experiments to try out new forms of collaboration, research, and teaching?

What would it take to establish a culture of experimenting with new forms of collaboration, teaching and research within given structures of the university (Pic: M.Rillig)

Sometimes it seems like the university is a bit out of date. Like, how would you set up a university in the current time, as opposed the model of the university we have now, based basically on Humboldt’s ideal (and idea that came out of Berlin).

But it seems unrealistic to set up a new universities, perhaps it’s more realistic to work within the current structure, but to try out new things, maybe tiny experiments, within that structure. Admittedly, there is only so much you can do, especially it seems in the German system. But perhaps it would help.

One idea might be to have temporary structures that can also go away again once their purpose has been fulfilled, like pop-up stores in the mall. Such temporary structures could bridge between departments or even incorporate people from outside the university, or maybe even outside academia. It would be kind of like start-ups within the university.

Perhaps it’s even simpler, like organizing salons (I wrote about this before), where people from different disciplines get together and interact without a specific goal in mind. Or evenings where scientists interact with a bunch of artists (we did this before and plan to do it again).

One of the jobs of a university is also teaching. How can we break out of the mold there? I started teaching a class on creativity (as definitely not a creativity expert), but maybe there could be much more going on like this, perhaps joint classes that also art students could attend, or engineering students, not just students from biology.

All of this could take on the form of “tiny experiments”, as proposed in the book by Anne-Laure Le Cunff (previously reviewed in this newsletter). Try this out for a few iterations and see what works, and then continue, modify or do something else. Taking this more experimental approach would probably be a really good idea. It should be low-investment, both in terms of time and money.

I wonder how much of this goes on in universities? How is this at your university? Have there been experiments like this? Have you done any? I think it’s still not easy, especially in very bureaucratic places like German universities, but it is also not impossible.

The major obstacles are probably time and motivation. It’s always difficult to carve out the time for anything, including such experiments. But it’s important to start small, and to keep the experiments “tiny”, so maybe the time investment is limited. Motivation is the other problem: will you get people motivated to do this with you, if this is not about getting funding, fulfilling teaching requirements or other core functions. Would you be motivated? But if it is fun, then this might work….