Interdisciplinarity in the undergraduate curriculum: a pilot study

In Semester 1 of 2003/04, a pilot 10-credit, undergraduate, interdisciplinary course unit was run by staff from the Schools of Geography, Education and Medicine at the University of Manchester. The pilot took a tried and tested model for a mono-disciplinary communication skills module developed in the School of Geography, University of Manchester over several years. With minor adjustments, the module was used as a basis for an interdisciplinary teaching and learning experience in which four students from each of the three departments took part. Like the original course, the pilot took an enquiry-based learning (EBL) approach and afforded students considerable autonomy, including in the choice of topic for research. In brief, the main aim of the course lay in developing skills of interdisciplinary team-working. Through their EBL experience, it was intended that students would develop a range of communication skills in an interdisciplinary context, such as communicating ideas to non-specialists, improving report writing and oral presentation skills and, through the evaluation of the work of peers, develop competence in giving and receiving feedback.

A range of data were gathered and analysed to enable evaluation of the module. From the point of view of informing future development of the course, interview data were the most instructive and these will therefore provide the evidence featured in this article. This paper provides an overview of the project and outlines possible future adaptations to the unit in the light of research findings. It is hoped that these will be of interest to HE colleagues with an interest in interdisciplinary teaching and learning.

It will begin with a brief exploration of relevant background to interdisciplinary teaching and learning from writing in the sector. The paper will then provide an overview of the evaluative research, and of the interdisciplinary unit itself, before outlining the implications of the findings for future interdisciplinary courses.

The value of the integration of knowledge has been recognised down the ages and remains arguably more relevant today than ever, though the general trend has been towards greater and greater fragmentation of knowledge since the 17^th century and the advent of the scientific age. However, the term ‘interdisciplinary’ belongs to the twentieth century and interdisciplinary research appears to be a pervasive phenomenon (. There is also evidence that interdisciplinary learning in contemporary HE appears in various guises and contexts around the world (eg , , ), though empirical research into the processes of interdisciplinary teaching and learning in HE is limited.

Klein (1990) provides a detailed map of the conceptual territory associated with interdisciplinarity, in both research and teaching, and underlines the complexity surrounding the term. She draws a distinction between interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity, with the latter signifying the juxtaposition of disciplines in a way that is ‘essentially additive not integrative’. In multidisciplinary working ‘the participating disciplines are neither changed nor enriched and …disciplinary relationships are likely to be limited and transitory’ . Interdisciplinary learning, on the other hand, involves a higher level of synthesis, requiring ‘a conscious attempt to integrate material from various fields of knowledge into a new, single, intellectually coherent entity’ and demanding ‘an understanding of the epistemologies and methodologies of other disciplines and, in a team effort, … the building of a common vocabulary.’ (p57). Transdisciplinary approaches, refer to comprehensive, higher order conceptual frameworks, such as Marxism, behaviourism and systems theory, that offer overarching syntheses and can ‘transcend the narrow scope of disciplinary world views, metaphorically encompassing the several parts of material handled separately by specialized disciplines’ (p66).

Recent writing puts forward a number of factors giving a new fillip to interdisciplinary learning and teaching activity in HE. Within academe, the cross-fertilization and borrowing across different paradigms associated with the postmodern world, have given rise to a growing tendency to experiment with techniques and concepts from other disciplines to shed new light on our own, thus leading to a blurring of disciplinary boundaries. New areas of study that do not fit neatly into traditional disciplines have also emerged (gender studies, environmental studies, communication studies etc) and there is evidence of some frustration at the inability of disciplines to communicate with one another and the way this impacts negatively on their ability to tackle problems of global significance (e.g. .

Out in the ‘real world’, factors have potential to act as stimuli for new, more integrative ways of knowing also. Among them are modern working patterns, which increasingly call for multi-professional team work; the democratisation of information via the internet, allowing people to gain knowledge formerly available only to experts; scepticism about the ability of science and technology to deliver a brighter future; and the very real and pressing world challenges (water politics, pandemics, famine, migration international crime, etc.) that confront us daily in the media, and that will require radically new and more holistic approaches than have been required hitherto. A number of authors underline the fact these world challenges can only be overcome by harnessing a sense of responsibility and purpose among humankind, an endeavour in which the universities have a pivotal role to play , ,.

Given these imperatives for more integrative ways of knowing and therefore of learning in Higher Education, why is there apparently so little interdisciplinary teaching going on? First, it seems plausible that the extent of interdisciplinary learning in the HE sector in the UK is more widespread than the relatively scant literature would suggest, with activity perhaps typically not being recognised outside its immediate context, or not explicitly being labelled interdisciplinary, and therefore remaining largely invisible.

Second, just as there are factors working in favour of interdisciplinary teaching initiatives in HE, there are others weighing against it. At the individual level, in some cases the self-image of tutors may be associated with their perceptions of themselves as experts in their fields, with the requirement to step outside the familiar role of expert constituting a threat to feelings of professional competence. Alongside this, a tutor may feel discomfort at the idea that they are in someway ‘selling students short’ by being unable to provide them with the level of support for interdisciplinary project work that they are accustomed to providing when teaching within their own discipline. Last, but by no means least, is the fact that the time required to step outside the discipline and create new networks and forge new ways of working and thinking, no matter how attractive a prospect, may simply require more time and energy than many can spare in the ever more pressured academic environment.

At the systemic level, other factors impinge. In an organisation where resources and promotional prospects are associated with competing departments, and therefore disciplines, and more closely related to research than to teaching, interdisciplinary teaching is likely to remain a minority interest, undertaken by a handful of enthusiasts and achieving little impact. More lasting change can only be achieved where there is change both at the individual and the systemic level. This implies a commitment at organisational level to finding the necessary resources for such inter-departmental teaching initiatives and to funding the professional development required to enable tutors to overcome uncertainties about relinquishing the traditional role of knowledge provider and embracing the more learner-centred approaches that typify interdisciplinary education.

The study reported here had the aim of providing data upon which to base decisions about whether: (i) the pilot interdisciplinary course was worth experimenting with further and (ii) if it did warrant repetition, how might it be developed in future to make it a more effective learning experience? Consistent with this aim, the research could be conceived of as illuminative evaluation, with its primary concern being with ‘description and interpretation rather than measurement and prediction’ 10). Research conducted within this paradigm attempts to shed light on innovative educational experiences by recording the experience of participants and discerning significant features of relevance to the researcher and the wider academic community.

The research was small in scale, with only 12 students taking part in the pilot, from Geography, Education and Medicine. In keeping with the predominantly illuminative purpose of the research, the bulk of the data gathered were verbal. Numerical data were also collected in the form of module evaluations and student self-ratings in a number of skills before the module and after it. These presented a favourable picture but their power to shed light on educational processes is limited and they are therefore not the focus of this paper.

In addition to reviewing relevant documentary sources (pilot project proposal, course unit outline, student outputs, etc.), a considerable quantity of qualitative data were collected. Fieldnotes were recorded by an independent educational researcher at each of the class sessions, and interviews with staff and students were recorded, transcribed and analysed as follows:

These data enabled the inclusion of a variety of perspectives to increase the credibility of findings. The role of the educational researcher was valuable in providing an outsider viewpoint and acting as a check on the assumptions that coloured our own reflections as insider researchers.

Week	Session	Content
1	1	‘Getting to know you’.
	2	Teams negotiate enquiry topics.
2	3	Oral presentations of project proposals. Feedback.
3	4	Work in project teams. Evaluation: focus group interviews in disciplinary groups.
4	5	Hand in reports. Presentations, discussion and feedback.
5	6	Remaining presentations. Discussion and feedback on presentations and written reports.
(6	Evaluation	Team/individual interviews).

Detailed guidance for students was provided in a 36-page booklet. Students worked in their interdisciplinary teams of three (one from each of the three disciplines represented in the pilot) between sessions on pre-set tasks. Each team collectively identified a topic for enquiry, organised, conducted and presented their work both in the form of an oral presentation and as a written report. Malaria, childhood obesity, the diffusion of AIDS in a migrant mining community and university tuition fees were the topics selected.

There was a considerable amount of data suggesting that the students had perceived the benefits of working with those from other disciplines. Benefits included being obliged to look at problems from new perspectives; learning about new study techniques or resources; and gaining experience in communicating ideas from their own discipline to those outside it:

Another aspect of the course that students strongly favoured was the opportunity to evaluate and provide feedback on the work of their peers:

The data also showed evidence of development in a range of transferable skills. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these varied considerably between the disciplines, but those where improvement was most commonly noted included: improved desk research skills, especially using electronic sources, and skills associated with oral presentation, report writing, negotiation and mentoring/guiding other students.

However, the data also pointed to a number of challenges inherent in interdisciplinary working, both in terms of course design, and in terms of the wider institutional context. First, from the course design point of view, the main weakness appears to have been the report writing assessment task, which did not adequately fulfil the intended learning outcome of engendering interdisciplinary discussion. To save time, data reveal that students had typically taken responsibility for sections of their written reports related to their own discipline, sometimes with little team discussion of the content of each section. In effect, the transactions that took place could more accurately be considered multidisciplinary in Klein’s terms, than truly interdisciplinary:

Given that one of the key objectives of the unit was to engender interdisciplinary discussion, future modifications to the students’ assessment tasks are currently being explored to ensure that the end products require more discussion and less writing, and a deeper level of integration of ideas from the different disciplines. For example, future modifications include (i) replacing the written report and oral presentation with a poster presentation, and (ii) including a greater emphasis on the importance of integration between the contributing disciplines by careful design of the task rubric and assessment criteria.

Second, although ultimately the end products (reports and presentations by the teams) and student data suggest evenness in the contribution of the three disciplines to the research projects, there is some evidence from our data of initial discomfort for a small minority of individuals grappling with material that they found hard to understand. The following quotations may also indicate the difficulty encountered by some students in asserting their views in group decision-making about the choice of research topic:

These quotations underscore the fact that interdisciplinary learning can be demanding. In addition to working with students from other programmes, with whom course participants were unfamiliar, trying to understand novel concepts and ways of working, and trying to explain concepts and ways of working to others, can be challenging. It can be salutary to see such data from time to time to remind ourselves of the demands that we place on our students, both intellectually and interpersonally, when we require them to engage in group projects of this kind.

Such data further remind us that the aims and learning outcomes for the unit (as expressed in the formal course outline) in this type of work, do little to convey the realities of the lived experience of the students. The thoughtful student will be apt to learn as much about themselves and the way they relate to others as they will subject content and methods from other disciplines. In order to try to capture the richness of their interdisciplinary learning experience, and to enhance the students’ ability to reflect on that experience, future students on the module will be required to keep a learning journal and to submit selected entries from it for assessment purposes.

From the staff perspective, working across faculty boundaries also presented a number of obstacles. First, the different ways the three degree programmes were structured, meant that the fit of the pilot unit, in terms of credit-rating, was different for each of them (education students gained 10 credits, geographers 5 and medics none). Ensuring equable accreditation across a range of disciplines, given the widely differing programme structures and regulations that pertain from department to department, was not straightforward. Indeed, discussions with colleagues in other departments have since revealed that the more departments are involved, the harder it becomes to find suitable compromises in important areas like accreditation and assessment.

In our institutional context, we found that interdisciplinary teaching did not fit very readily with other centralised systems, including assigning course codes. These have a prefix to identify the home department and have significant implications, amongst other matters, for the administration of examination boards and for how teaching income is re-distributed. Thus, our modest pilot tested a number of centralised systems and required administrators to use considerable ingenuity in accommodating us.

Quality Assurance procedures also stipulate that course units should be set at a particular year of undergraduate study, and that course aims and objectives should reflect ‘levelness’. Given the individual and iterative nature of the learning process, the notion of assigning aims and objectives to a specific year of study in this way seems, to say the least, dubious. Neither did it sit well with our pilot, in which students from different programmes were also from different year groups. Interestingly, in practice, there was no evidence in any of the data that having a mix of year groups was of any significance whatsoever for the students.

Other challenges arose in enabling students with different timetables to meet between sessions to complete their tasks. In future, two timetabled slots per week will be provided, one with tutor facilitators and one for the interdisciplinary teams to work alone on their tasks. In addition, using a dedicated web forum is being explored as a way of alleviating timetable problems, as a well as encouraging and tracking interdisciplinary dialogue on set tasks. Similarly, as our project has grown over recent months, we, as staff, have come to appreciate that as the number of disciplines increases, so the complexities of coordinating collaborative course development seem to grow exponentially.

We have been fortunate in that our institution will fund curriculum innovation. We are unsure, however, how the resourcing of this or other interdisciplinary teaching might be funded beyond the pilot phase, or whether it is to be left in the hands of a few enthusiasts to take forward in addition to their normal departmental duties. The fact that staff and other resources in HE are typically allocated along departmental lines may pose a threat to the notion of such teaching and learning becoming mainstream.

The pilot interdisciplinary unit proved to be a valuable learning experience for students and staff, all of whom benefited from the stimulus of working in novel ways and in novel environments. Working across disciplinary boundaries calls for flexible university structures and is not without its challenges. However, we believe that interdisciplinarity is an urgent priority for the sector and we have found that it can be genuinely reinvigorating.

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Higher Education Research Opportunities in the UK (HERO). (1999). RAE briefing paper: interdisciplinary research and the research assessment exercise.

Huber, L. (2002). "From general education to interdisciplinary studies." Higher Education Policy 15: 19-31.

Jenkins, J. A. (2002). "General education in the University of Massachusetts Amherst: a new rationale." Higher Education Policy 15: 45-54.

Klein, J. T. (1990). Interdisciplinarity: history, theory and practice. Detroit, Michigan, Wayne State University Press.

Scott, P. (2002). "The future of general education in mass higher education systems." Higher Education Policy 15: 61-75.