Building a Conceptual Framework for Creating New Knowledge Through a Virtual Interdisciplinary Environment Process

This chapter illustrates practical and theoretical aspects of constructing a conceptual framework for an interdisciplinary online collaboration designed to co-create new knowledge. Insights are drawn from experience engaging natural and social scientific experts and practitioners in the research Consortium on Climate Change and Population Health. A conceptual framework is a set of broad ideas and principles taken from relevant fields of inquiry that are used to structure a subsequent activity (Reichel and Ramey (Eds.), Conceptual frameworks for bibliographic education: Theory to practice. Libraries Unlimited, Inc. Littleton Colorado, 1987). It establishes objectives, provides focus, rationale, integration tools and outlines possible courses of action. The goal of the Consortium framework is to assist in developing awareness, understanding and new ways to consider complex issues across disciplinary parameters while remaining open to new and unexpected occurrences and encouraging creativity. This approach could be applied across other fields and issues to provide conceptual clarity for guiding the process and for developing meaningful indicators and measurements. Key lessons include the need to support all participants in contributing to defining indicators that support successful action, flexibility in process structure and data scale, the value of developing complimentary competencies throughout the process, and the importance of incorporating various values and methods in outputs and outcomes.