Interdisciplinary Laboratory Course Facilitating Knowledge Integration, Mutualistic Teaming, and Original Discovery

Abstract

Experiencing the thrill of an original scientific discovery can be transformative to students unsure about becoming a scientist, yet few courses offer authentic research experiences. Increasingly, cutting-edge discoveries require an interdisciplinary approach not offered in current departmental-based courses. Here, we describe a one-semester, learning laboratory course on organismal biomechanics offered at our large research university that enables interdisciplinary teams of students from biology and engineering to grow intellectually, collaborate effectively, and make original discoveries. To attain this goal, we avoid traditional "cookbook" laboratories by training 20 students to use a dozen research stations. Teams of five students rotate to a new station each week where a professor, graduate student, and/or team member assists in the use of equipment, guides students through stages of critical thinking, encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, and moves them toward authentic discovery. Weekly discussion sections that involve the entire class offer exchange of discipline-specific knowledge, advice on experimental design, methods of collecting and analyzing data, a statistics primer, and best practices for writing and presenting scientific papers. The building of skills in concert with weekly guided inquiry facilitates original discovery via a final research project that can be presented at a national meeting or published in a scientific journal.

A Framework to Guide Undergraduate Education in Interdisciplinary Science

“…Clearly, the depth of a student’s knowledge (on a novice to expert scale) in any one discipline will depend on programmatic expectations and vary among individuals’ past experiences and knowledge. Although many students do begin to develop robust disciplinary-knowledge platforms, requiring undergraduate students to be experts in any one discipline, let alone all disciplines involved, is likely unreasonable (Boix Mansilla and Duraisingh, 2007; Full et al , 2015). We suggest that being grounded in disciplinary content means that students must be at least provisionally knowledgeable in possible disciplines involved in a question or activity at hand, yet maintain accessible, deeper knowledge from a single discipline.…”

“…Examples of project-based laboratories that compile different research methods from STEM disciplines are also covered, further elucidating the importance of interdisciplinary laboratory skills. In addition, a study by Full et al (2015) outlines a framework for interdisciplinary laboratory courses that involved students rotating between “stations” of different disciplines where they learned concepts and research techniques. This was followed by students collaboratively addressing a novel issue by employing the different methods that they learned from each discipline.…”

Interdisciplinarity And Transdisciplinarity In Teacher Education

“…Hence, an interdisciplinary activity is a process of exchange and cooperation, focusing on the coordination and integration of disciplinary knowledge when addressing a particular issue, object of study or research setting (Fidalgo-Neto, Lopes, Magalhães, Pierini, & Alves, 2014). One of the ways to facilitate collaboration while studying interdisciplinary courses is to create interdisciplinary teams of learners (Full, Dudley, Koehl, Libby, & Schwab, 2015).…”

Guided Hands‐On Activities Can Improve Student Learning in a Lecture‐Based Qualitative Biomechanics Course

“…Kinesiology undergraduate programs will typically offer one upper‐division biomechanics course, but some programs offer two courses split between qualitative biomechanics and quantitative biomechanics (Hamill, ). While only slightly more than half of biomechanics courses provide dedicated time for laboratory experiences (Garceau et al, ), most instructors believe that laboratory time enhances learning outcomes in biomechanics (DiCecco et al, ; Knudson et al, ; Full et al, ). However, not all pedagogical results indicate a significant correlation between learning and laboratory time (Hsieh and Knudson, ; Knudson et al, ).…”