Interdisciplinary Graduate Students Research Articles

Government-University Relationship in China’s AI Talent Development: A Triple Helix Perspective

Using the Triple Helix model, this study explores the government-university relationship in the context of China’s AI talent development, and their outcomes in terms of AI program deployment, enrollment and faculty. Their interaction may best be summarized as a model of government pull and university response, but with more support and autonomy for the Shuang Yiliu groups. Specifically, the state has maintained a dominant role as a policymaker in promoting the production of AI personnel and showed strong mobilizing abilities to integrate universities into the national AI strategy. Government guidelines outlined the roadmap for training top AI talent with a focus on Shuang Yiliu universities, universities with Shuang Yiliu disciplines, and interdisciplinary graduate students. Universities have responded with quick launch of AI programs, large enrollment and faculty with advanced training and overseas experience. A multi-level AI personnel training system has taken shape. With their privilege in financial and policy support and more autonomy, Shuang Yiliu universities, and universities with Shuang Yiliu disciplines will be the main producers of AI-concentrated graduate students. Theoretical contributions are discussed and policy and practice implications for addressing AI program distributions, talent development and retention, faculty and research, and AI as a discipline provided.

Research on the Training Mode and Countermeasures of Interdisciplinary Postgraduates

With the increasing demand of the society for high-level interdisciplinary talents, it has become an irresistible trend to cultivate interdisciplinary talents. Meanwhile, a large number of major interdisciplinary subjects need to be solved urgently and there is a sharp shortage of high-level talents with interdisciplinary knowledge structure. Therefore, it is urgent to promote the cultivation of interdisciplinary graduate students. This study focuses on the analysis of the cultivation of interdisciplinary graduate students, finds out the possible problems and current situation in the cultivation mode of interdisciplinary graduate students, and finally puts forward countermeasures and suggestions to improve the cultivation status of interdisciplinary graduate students.

Water Diplomacy: Perspectives from a Group of Interdisciplinary Graduate Students

Water management challenges are multifaceted, often involving issues of water availability, quality, access and equity. It is increasingly recognized that professionals trained to work in traditional disciplinary roles are ill-equipped to address complex issues such as water that transcend both geographic and disciplinary boundaries. A growing number of interdisciplinary doctoral programs, including the Water Diplomacy Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) at Tufts University, have formed to respond to demand for progress in this area. This paper presents a Water Diplomacy IGERT student perspective on the benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary water education. First, we find that articulating a set of shared principles helps to build a strong research community, which in turn shapes the research approach and perspectives of participating students. Second, we recommend students clearly state uncertainties and assumptions to tackle the challenge of working with multidimensional complex systems. Next, we advise that students collaborate with researchers and partner organizations to gain exposure to different approaches outside of their discipline, and to increase breadth of knowledge while maintaining sufficient depth. Finally, we recommend that students take an active role in program leadership to ensure balance between program and student development. These difficulties are not unique to water education, and therefore we hope this discussion can help inform future interdisciplinary education and research efforts.

Teaching the Linkages among Technology, Economics and Societal Values to Interdisciplinary Graduate Students

Teaching the Linkages among Technology, Economics and Societal Values to Interdisciplinary Graduate Students

A Masterclass in interdisciplinarity: Research into practice in training the next generation of interdisciplinary researchers

This paper draws on evaluations of a number of interdisciplinary studentship and fellowship schemes to discuss some of the challenges of developing interdisciplinary research skills in early career researchers. It describes efforts to support such capacity-building in the UK through a series of Interdisciplinary Masterclasses which used workshop-based elicitation techniques to develop smallscale studies in order to synthesise experiential knowledge and foster mutual learning. This has enabled us to build important bridges between research and practice, thereby supporting and developing the interdisciplinary careers of early- and mid-career researchers, as well as research managers and leaders. This paper describes an approach to interdisciplinary capacity-building derived from actual practice. Based on learning from these activities, we offer some suggestions for improved supervision and mentoring of interdisciplinary graduate students and young postdoctoral researchers. If we are to develop effective, future interdisciplinary capacity, we advocate that supervisors/mentors need to focus, not just on the research, but on the particular forms of professional support and mentoring required by inexperienced interdisciplinary researchers in terms of career guidance, the development of publications strategies and network building.

Transforming Design Thinking into Collaborative Innovation: Meeting the Emerging Neds and Demands of a Complex World Through Design Thinking and Collaborative Innovation

AbstractThis paper/presentation will provide a description of the newly developed MFA/MA in Design with a concentration in Innovation Studies in the College of Visual Arts at the University of North Texas and the ways in which creates opportunities for faculty members from varying disciplines (Communication Design, Anthropology, Marketing and Logistics, Information Technology and Decision Sciences) to teach linked classes to cohorts of interdisciplinary graduate students—enabling the program to more effectively meet the demands of an increasingly complex world within which design is practised.Design’s increasing contribution to corporate competitiveness, its growing user inclusiveness and a marked reliance by those outside the discipline on its methodologies pose unique challenges to graduate design programs seeking to meet these emerging demands. Success in the market place and market of ideas now requires innovative thinking and collaborative interdisciplinarity. No longer is it possible for corporation...

Entering Unfamiliar Territory

There has been a long-standing interest within academic librarian community to provide support for graduate students involved in interdisciplinary research. This column focuses on challenges that researchers face when seeking information in an unfamiliar disciplinary area as well as what is known about information behaviors of interdisciplinary researchers. Using a framework of information seeking strategies, elements of a course for interdisciplinary graduate students are proposed. Topics that are addressed are learning about culture and language of an unfamiliar discipline; including scholarly communication apparatus and organization of information; mechanisms for identifying and locating key authors, publications, research institutions, and emerging research fronts; how to determine when enough information has been gathered; and keeping up with latest research.--Editor Given increase in number and interest in interdisciplinary programs and research in U.S. institutions of higher education, academic librarians should be involved in determining information literacy needs of graduate students in interdisciplinary areas. (1) Don Spanner expresses this need in his published study of a group of interdisciplinary researchers: Is it solely domain of scholars? What is trickle down effect on students as curriculum shifts to encompass interdisciplinarity? Such a determination would allow reference librarians to consider importance of developing necessary bibliographic instructional skills to support both scholars and students in their research. (2) Recent studies of information needs and behavior of interdisciplinary researchers, including graduate students, demonstrate that researchers have difficulties discovering authoritative information sources when venturing outside their major field of study. (3) What approaches have librarians and information scientists found for teaching graduate students about developing vocabularies and learning about core information sources outside of their main disciplinary domains? This article attempts to answer this question by first exploring information behaviors of interdisciplinary researchers and difficulties they face in locating key sources of information outside their disciplines. From this review and analysis, information literacy instruction approaches are proposed for creating a course for interdisciplinary graduate students on following topics: learning about culture and language of an unfamiliar discipline; how new research is communicated and made accessible to others; identifying and locating key authors, publications, and research institutions through chaining, or footnote chasing; probing activities to increase breadth of information gathered through searching multidisciplinary databases and federated search products; networking; keeping up with research literature; and integration and consolidation of interdisciplinary knowledge. CHALLENGES OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH Lynn Westbrook describes interdisciplinary research as the purposeful weaving together of two or more disciplines that are usually considered to be quite unconnected in order to reach a new understanding, create a new academic end product or advance research on a particular question. (4) From an extensive literature review of issues facing interdisciplinary researchers, themes that emerged are need to learn language and culture of discipline, information-scatter issue for highly distributed research areas, nature and quality of bibliographic apparatuses to search for information, and keeping up with current research. For interdisciplinary researchers, there is a need to become familiar with cultural assumptions, language, and organization of knowledge in other discipline. (5) Being able to communicate with those outside one's own discipline requires knowledge of vocabulary of discipline. …

Homo Virtualis

This article previews the emergence of homo virtualis. Drawing on data from seven research studies, peerreviewed published research articles, and selected excerpts of 30 months of field notes taken in Second Life, the article examines virtual learning environments and embodiment through the lens of interactions of avatars with other avatars, virtual objects, landscapes, sounds, and spatial constructs. Analysis is grounded in the polyvocal evidence provided by select participants who experienced a sense of embodied co-presence and connection with others across geo-physical distances. The discourse ranges from that of high school girls, professional retirees, toxicology and design undergraduates, interdisciplinary graduate students, to educators and researchers from K-12 through university full professors collaborating in SL. In an ecology of virtual contexts, learners inhabit a broader landscape of their own and others’ making that allows them to be teachers, designers, researchers, communicators, and collaborators.

Teaching group dynamics: An interdisciplinary model

A model for teaching group dynamics to interdisciplinary graduate students is described. The model enhances the generalization of learning from classroom to workplace by encouraging cooperation and collaboration. It can be used by schools of education as a foundational group dynamics course for teachers, counselors, and other administrative personnel. Through the use of five active learning processes—viewing and critiquing videotapes of classroom interaction, maintaining a process and content journal, participating in an outdoor experiential course, role playing in simulation games for team building, and applying sociodramatic techniques for learning integration—students demonstrate adaptive behavior and critical thinking skills that will enable them to be more productive team members in the classroom and workplace.