Multidisciplinary curriculum design approaches towards balanced and holistic graduates

Abstract

A multidisciplinary approach is important to encourage collaboration inter-faculties and universities. This initiative would inculcate mutual intellectual collaboration among and beyond faculty members. For example, students from Bachelor of Civil Engineering program from the Faculty of Civil Engineering can enroll in the identified elective courses from the Faculty of Music. The main objective of this research is to provide a research framework (at university level) for assimilating multidisciplinary courses in the curriculum structure. The multidisciplinary approach may be further enhanced with the mapping of Harvard Outcome Domains (HOD), 21st Century Skills, Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and elements of Fourth Industrial Revolution. This study adopted action research method to identify (to explore) to what extend the outcomes and elements of HOD are embedded in proposed multidisciplinary elective courses. The proposed research framework of this study (at university level) comprises four phases (i) Phase 1: Identification of Elective Courses and Mapping of Elective Courses to Harvard Outcomes Domain (HOD), (ii) Phase 2: Discussions with Faculties and Branch Campuses, (iii) Phase 3: Marketing and Promotions and (iv) Phase 4: Assimilation in Curriculum Review and Development of New Programme. The preliminary studies were conducted from October 2016 to June 2017. The preliminary results for Phase 1 were reported in this paper. Future work may include further elaboration of the framework, specifically at a programme level.