Developing effective research-practitioner partnerships

A team of researchers from DC Labs has published an experience report about DC Labs itself.

The report details the activities undertaken at the multi-disciplinary centre to build a culture of academic entrepreneurship that allows researchers to understand the goals of external partners and align with them. 

The report was presented at the 7th international workshop on Software Engineering Research & Industrial Practice (SER&IP), a community of software engineering specialists committed to closing the gap between research and practice through improving researcher-practitioner collaborations. 

The paper, a team effort with contributions from many current and previous DC Labs staff, reflected on the DC Labs’ experiences over the last four years in bringing researchers together with non-academic organisations to deliver real-world projects.

Lab researchers drew some key “lessons learned” from these experiences and argued for the importance of a multi-disciplinary approach in achieving high quality impact, as well as emphasising innovation training for researchers.

In presenting the paper, DC Labs’ Claire Ingram pointed to several case studies as examples of how DC Labs’ multi-disciplinary and innovation-driven approach has allowed researchers to develop productive partnerships.

Case studies included Gaming Grammar, a platform for supporting language learning for school children, and Viking VR, a project that delivered a VR installation to illustrate life in the winter camp of the Viking Great Army, in partnership with the Yorkshire Museums Trust.

The full paper also pointed to further examples, including Weavr, a groundbreaking technology platform that uses live and historic data to create meaningful and highly personalised mixed-reality experiences for esports and sports fans alike, extending work originally generated by DC Labs researchers. 

The SER&IP workshop has transitioned this year to a virtual event, with presentations delivered by presenters on different continents by live video link. The workshop is part of the much larger International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), one of the world’s top conferences for software engineering research.

Please click here to read the full paper.