Interdisciplinarity, the crossing of traditional boundaries between academic disciplines to advance understanding of a complex world, is lauded as the salve to wicked problems, such as climate change and disease, and multifaceted real-world questions. When embedded in curricula and course design, interdisciplinary teaching enables students to step back from the narrow lens of one subject specialism and get a broader understanding of how things work in practice. It can augment engineering or healthcare, for example, with insights from the social sciences or humanities. But such ambitious cross-disciplinary goals must overcome culture clashes and difficulties around assessment, accreditation and pedagogy. This collection offers advice for instructional design, inter-faculty collaboration, inclusive classrooms and integrating technology to advance the mission of interdisciplinarity.
The higher education teaching toolbox offers a dazzling array of possibilities – from flipped learning to virtual internships – to help students acquire the silo-busting skills that can lead to novel solutions and innovation. Here’s how to teach interdisciplinarity by example.
Interdisciplinary learning prepares students for a working world that requires skills from beyond the confines of one subject-specific degree. Inter-professional courses that present authentic, complex challenges can help graduates with this adjustment. A benefit illustrated here is healthcare education, where effective communication and collaboration skills are vital.
Artificial intelligence is a multidisciplinary tool, so it can be used to help students and lecturers break out of subject silos and draw on broader expertise. And an interdisciplinary approach to engaging with AI is likely to herald better results, as these resources explain.
