What we aim to develop
- Interdisciplinary study programmes and courses that provide students with experience working across disciplinary boundaries
- Interdisciplinary teaching sessions that can be integrated into existing educational programmes
- Short projects and learning activities that can be incorporated into a range of courses and study programmes
- Methods and tools for interdisciplinary learning and collaboration that support the development of interdisciplinary competence
Three scales
These three scales open for broad coverage – we will reach many programs and students at the three faculties.
Principles of innovation
Evidence-based approaches: INTED’s development activities will include both general principles of teaching, learning, and program design, as well as principles for interdisciplinary learning. All development and teaching supported by the center will be based on general evidence-based approaches that focus on student learning and incorporate, for instance, active learning principles.
Principles of interdisciplinary integration: Our activities will be designed to support interdisciplinary competence through the integration of disciplinary knowledge. We will therefore develop different approaches and evaluate them through education research projects. We will start from established principles from research on interdisciplinary education. These principles will be integrated in educational designs, courses, and facilitator training programs.
Supporting interdisciplinary integration: We will develop, pilot, and evaluate several approaches to help students learn to integrate insights across disciplines. This will be achieved through problem-based and project-based learning in interdisciplinary groups, as well as by emphasizing writing for interdisciplinary understanding. This will, for example, be done by having regular sessions where teams of teachers discuss integration with students or having students write reflection notes on how different disciplines are affected by the integration.
What is interdisciplinary competence?
The ability to integrate knowledge and perspectives from two or more disciplines to identify, analyze, and solve complex problems that cannot be solved effectively or adequately and in an ethically responsible manner using mono-disciplinary approaches alone.
When considering interdisciplinary education, we aim for students to perceive interdisciplinarity as a synthesis of various subjects, rather than merely an extension of their own field.
