Mixing fluid mechanics with circus: an interdisciplinary pedagogical experiment

Abstract

<p>We present here a unique experiment that crosses borders of disciplines to stimulate active learning and to challenge students’ learning process.</p><p>The joint pedagogical activity involved third year engineering students attending the AE1601/AE1603 <em>Fluid mechanics</em> course at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) and first year students from the Bachelor of circus programme at Stockholm School of Circus (SKH).</p><p>The experiment took place in September 2021, over five days, as closing assignment for the fluid mechanics course. To KTH students, this was offered as an extra curriculum option and forty of the registered ninety students volunteered to take part in the pedagogical activity; students were divided in two groups of twenty students each (Group A and Group B). To the sixteen SKH students it was a required part of their <em>Performance and Interpretation</em> course where they learn performance techniques beyond their primary circus disciplines.</p><p>The learning objectives where different for the three sets of students:</p><ul><li>Group A Fluid mechanics students: practice transferring of knowledge; adapt form of communication.</li> <li>Circus students: receive input unrelated to circus techniques; interpret with movement that both captured the essence of the scientific concepts while also attending to aesthetic and compositional presentation.</li> <li>Group B Fluid mechanics students: exercise critical thinking, practice assessment in an out-of-context situation.</li> </ul><p>On the first day of the activity, Group A fluid mechanics students met with the sixteen circus students and formed ten randomly mixed groups: the task for fluid mechanics students was to teach selected topics recently learned from the fluid mechanics course to the circus colleagues. This became the input for the circus students’ task: they had three days to prepare a physical presentation representing the concepts learned from their paired fluid mechanics colleagues.</p><p>On the last day of the activity, Group B fluid mechanics students were randomly allocated to a circus performance and their task was to interpret the performance and understand which fluid mechanic concept had inspired it.</p><p>Fluid mechanics students had two types of assessment, each of which reflected their task. Group A students were indirectly assessed: the fluid mechanics lecturer interviewed circus students on what they had learned from their colleagues. For Group B students the assessment was based on a report where they first discussed which topics they perceived in the presentations, then they interviewed the circus performer and wrote about what the circus student intended to represent.</p><p>The essence of the pedagogical task for the circus students was the process: receiving, interpreting, composing and presenting. Circus students engaged in reflective self-assessment in dialogue with the instructors and course leader, including discussion of how their presentations were received and understood by the fluid mechanics students. </p><p>We believe this activity had high pedagogic value for the students in both courses as supported by students´ evaluations. By engaging with the course contents in a fun, creative and a-typical manner, all participants gained experiences that enriched knowledge in their own domain as well as their ability to communicate with people from other domains.</p>