Challenges to Student Interdisciplinary Learning Effectiveness: An Empirical Case Study

Abstract

In order to meet industrial demands, some colleges and universities have offered interdisciplinary programs that integrate design, engineering, and business. However, how many changes these programs have brought to students, and whether students participating in these programs have had better interdisciplinary ability than students involved in a single discipline study have always been questions that many researchers want to explore. In a university that offers an interdisciplinary program, we found that there is no significant difference in interdisciplinary integration ability between the students participating in the interdisciplinary program and the students involved in a single discipline study through quantitative comparisons of 91 student questionnaires and analyses of interviews with nine teachers of interdisciplinary courses and other related staff members. This may result from the students’ lack of motivation, lack of prior experience, the influence of individual traits, the increase of learning pressure and academic burden, and the interference of disciplinary factors during interdisciplinary learning. The research finding is intended to improve student interdisciplinary learning effectiveness by facilitating interdisciplinary teachers’ understanding of the influencing factors of student interdisciplinary learning, and by providing a reference for interdisciplinary teaching design.

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“…Interdisciplinary discipline refers to the phenomenon of cross-integration formed by the interconnection and cooperation between various discipline and fields (Xu et al, 2022). that interdisciplinary education is a way to improve the comprehensive quality of colleges and universities, give full play to the discipline advantages of colleges and universities, and is also an effective way to improve students' comprehensive quality and social competitiveness.…”

Multidisciplinary Dairy Milk Packaging Collaboration

“…Through all project phases, including the creation and feedback stages, it was discovered that several factors could facilitate or impede the interdisciplinary learning process to influence its potential value. These factors determine how enriching a multidisciplinary education is to students, including their level of motivation and interaction with the other disciplines before the class, personality, academic stress, and the learning environment [7]. This paper illustrates how disciplinary education and an interdisciplinary research project are undertaken in the classroom and represents the findings of the educational outcomes for the design and food science students and instructors.…”

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