Education Commons^™

Lessons From The Pandemic: Engaging Wicked Problems With Transdisciplinary Deliberation, Miles C. Coleman, Susana C. Santos, Joy M. Cypher, Claude Krummenacher, Robert Fleming

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

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 …