Teaching Interdisciplinary Students

        Contributed By: Lauren Granillo, Matthew Marquis, and Khang Ton

Teaching interdisciplinary courses involves several unique challenges which stem from student diversity. Students may be in different stages of their educations/careers, may have different interests and long-term goals, and may have been prepared to different degrees by their prior coursework. In our meeting on May 16, 2018, we discussed the current state of interdisciplinary education at UC Davis, the value of interdisciplinary education, and strategies which may be used to overcome its unique challenges.

We began the session by focusing on graduate groups at UC Davis as a model for interdisciplinary education. An open discussion was held regarding the advantages and disadvantages of enrollment in a graduate group and interdisciplinary education in general. members of the group shared their experiences participating in graduate groups and teaching interdisciplinary courses.One major theme that emerged was the advantage of obtaining a breadth of knowledge with the caveat that it must not come at the expense of gaining a depth of knowledge.

The group them moved on to an in-class activity meant to practice one teaching strategy which is particularly useful in interdisciplinary classes. The strategy, called a knowledge assessment exercise, is meant to address variation in student preparedness for a particular lesson. Knowledge assessment exercises gauge the students’ knowledge of  material prerequisite to the lesson and thus allow the instructor to focus effort on explaining topics which students know the least about. GTC members took turns presenting multiple choice knowledge questions to the rest of the group. The challenge to the questioner was to guess what proportion of the group would answer the question correctly. Several members of the group found the exercise enlightening in that they realized that trivia which they take for granted may not be known to people in other disciplines. As concluding remarks, it was noted that knowledge assessment questions should be carefully crafted to directly address knowledge that students will need for the lesson at hand and that the assessor should be cognisant of the inherent challenge in distinguishing a lack of knowledge from a lack of understanding.

Others challenges and strategies were then covered and are are summarized as follows:

Key ideas for instructors to consider when teaching and planning an interdisciplinary course:

• How can I use student’s aspirations/current careers in examples
• How can I best evaluate the level of knowledge that students have entering the class
• Are there areas/examples that I can be more flexible in and open up to ideas from my students
• How best can I encourage students from different academic backgrounds to work together and engage in interdisciplinary dialogue

The meeting was concluded with a brief viewing of 9 hypothetical steps to success in interdisciplinary teaching which were proposed by Allen Repko, Director of the Interdisciplinary Studies Program for the School of Urban and Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Arlington. These steps are:

1. DEFINE problems, issues, topics or questions that warrant interdisciplinary examination
2. PRESENT a clear rationale for taking interdisciplinary approach including the advantages to be gained
3. IDENTIFY relevant disciplines
4. CONDUCT a literature review (what is known on the topic from each of the disciplines)
5. DEVELOP a command of each relevant discipline. Set out the analytical structure central to each discipline, identify key underlying assumptions, and methods of evaluation.
6. STUDY the problem and generate insights including predictions from each of the relevant disciplines - in isolation!!
7. IDENTIFY conflicts between and/or areas of complementarity between the insights offered from each discipline
8. CREATE common ground by developing a cohesive framework of analysis that incorporates insights from the relevant disciplines in a systematic manner.
9. COMBINE disciplinary insights to construct a new, more integrated understanding of the problem.