Open AccessLessons From the Pandemic: Engaging Wicked Problems With Transdisciplinary Deliberation
Author(s) -
Miles C. Coleman,
Susana C. Santos,
Joy M. Cypher,
Claude Krummenacher,
Robert S. Fleming
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of communication pedagogy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2640-4524
pISSN - 2578-2568
DOI - 10.31446/jcp.2021.2.17
Subject(s) - deliberation , pandemic , citizen journalism , wicked problem , sociology , resource (disambiguation) , public relations , covid-19 , engineering ethics , political science , medicine , computer science , engineering , politics , computer network , disease , software engineering , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty) , law
Some crises, such as those brought on or exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, are wicked problems—large, complex problems with no immediate answer. As such, they make rich centerpieces for learning with respect to public deliberation and issue-based dialogue. This essay reflects on an experimental, transdisciplinary health and science communication course entitled Comprehending COVID-19. The course represents a collaborative effort among 14 faculty representing 10 different academic departments to create a resource for teaching students how to deliberate the pandemic, despite its attending, oversaturated, fake-news-infused, infodemic. We offer transdisciplinary deliberation as a pedagogical framework to expand communication repertoires in ways useful for sifting through the messiness of an infodemic while also developing key deliberation skills for productively engaging participatory decision-making with concern to wicked problems.