The “Death” of Disciplines: Development of a Team-Taught Course to Provide an Interdisciplinary Perspective for First-Year Students

Krometis, Leigh‐Anne; Clark, Elena P.; Gonzalez, Vincent; Leslie, Michelle E.

doi:10.1080/87567555.2010.538765

Cited by 25 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…There is a vast amount of research literature on the transition from high school to university and from level to level within university, best teaching practices, peer mentorship programs and how T 2016 CELT Vol IX celt.uwindsor.ca www.stlhe.ca students can help one another through their university experiences, and interdisciplinary courses, programs, and critiques (see reviews by Chen, Hsu, & Wu, 2009;Franks et al, 2007;Knight, Lattuca, Kimball, & Reason, 2013;Krometis, Clark, Gonzalez, & Leslie, 2011;and Stone, Bollard, & Harbor, 2009). We discuss some of this literature below -in particular, papers that recommend approaches to create such a first-year course as described above, that support students through their transition to university.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Interdisciplinary Science Course for First-Year Faculty of Science Students: Overview and Preliminary Results from the Pilot

Cockcroft

Symons

Goff

et al. 2016

CELT

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Transitioning to university can be a daunting endeavour, with student success dependent on a myriad of effects (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). Understanding how to navigate university systems, who to meet, how to get help, how to study, and what goals to set can be hard to grasp (Valle et al., 2003). We provide an overview of the new interdisciplinary foundations course, which piloted in fall 2014, for first-year Faculty of Science students at McMaster University. This course provides a taste of research-based learning (Healey, Jenkins, & Lea, 2014) and develops essential skills that are important for an undergraduate degree and future academic or career plans, exposes students to a wide range of departments and programs in the Faculty of Science, and invites students to reflect on their academic journey and how it may be changing as a result of the course. This customized approach intentionally teaches students how to locate and use institutional resources and the expectations that the institution has of its students, while offering opportunities to create networks of support essential for student success and retention (Kuh, Cruce, Shoup, Kinzie, & Gonyea, 2008), and speaks to a number of considerations highlighted in the literature (e.g., Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, & Norman, 2010). Other factors considered include balancing the needs of the Faculty, the resources available, and the goals, demands, and interests of the students. In this paper, we describe the course’s design, structure and implementation, key components of the course, support from upper-level science students, and preliminary pedagogical results, which assess its impact on and perception by students.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Interdisciplinary Science Course for First-Year Faculty of Science Students: Overview and Preliminary Results from the Pilot

Cockcroft

Symons

Goff

et al. 2016

CELT

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This was improved in subsequent years by sharing project deliverables for both groups of students during a combined meeting. However, students continued to struggle with grasping the breadth and expectations of the project [8,9]. Student responses (11 out of 45) to a formative assessment quiz question during the third year of the cross-disciplinary project highlight the general confusion and anxiety felt by students prior to the start of the afterschool club.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Students often struggle to connect topics from other disciplines with their narrowly defined fields of expertise and don't identify the contributions of 'multiple fields to complex problems' [6]. The breadth of cross-disciplinary projects can also make students uncomfortable [8]. These difficulties can be alleviated if instructors provide sufficient support and guidance to their students.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The uncharted territory of the new experience may lead students to depend more on their instructors than they would in a single discipline course. Students may become frustrated if they feel that time with the instructors of both disciplines is limited or not occurring regularly [8,9]. Different disciplines likely contribute in varying ways to a given cross-disciplinary problem.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is vital for the instructors to put in extra time teaching each other about their disciplines, developing and refining course structure, and monitoring the student experience throughout the course [7,8,11,12]. Clear communication of their individual course objectives during the planning and implementation phases ensures both instructors achieve their learning goals [10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Building Teaching Collaborations across Disciplines

Keshwani¹,

Adams²

2016 ASEE Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

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Current engineering curricula provide few opportunities for students to interact with their peers in other disciplines. However, the engineering profession, and society as a whole, is becoming more and more integrated requiring communication skills for discussing a variety of topics with a variety of audiences. Engineering students need opportunities to practice communicating technical information with non-technical audiences. One way for engineering instructors to facilitate these opportunities is to collaborate with faculty in non-technical disciplines. Developing and sustaining cross-disciplinary learning experiences requires collaborating instructors to model strong communication and team-working skills for their students. The objective of this paper is to discuss best practices for incorporating cross-disciplinary experiences for students into engineering coursework. This paper describes the implementation of a cross-disciplinary experience between engineering and elementary education students. Lessons learned by the course instructors and the subsequent adjustments to the project implementation are discussed in the hopes that future instructors of cross-disciplinary experiences will benefit.

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Educating Citizen Scholars: Interdisciplinary First-Year Seminars at the University of Guelph

Murray¹

2016

Universities, the Citizen Scholar and the Future of Higher Education

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The “Death” of Disciplines: Development of a Team-Taught Course to Provide an Interdisciplinary Perspective for First-Year Students

Cited by 25 publications

References 8 publications

New Interdisciplinary Science Course for First-Year Faculty of Science Students: Overview and Preliminary Results from the Pilot

New Interdisciplinary Science Course for First-Year Faculty of Science Students: Overview and Preliminary Results from the Pilot

Building Teaching Collaborations across Disciplines

Educating Citizen Scholars: Interdisciplinary First-Year Seminars at the University of Guelph

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