Interdisciplinary Learning Opportunities Research Articles

Exploring the Interconnections and Practical Applications of Art within a STEAM Education Curriculum

Art plays a vital role in STEAM education, not only bringing creativity and aesthetic thinking to the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics but also enriching students' modes of expression and problem-solving abilities. By integrating art with other STEAM disciplines, we can help students develop creative and critical thinking skills, enhance their understanding of the real world, and master interdisciplinary capabilities. This paper investigates the challenges faced by higher education students in integrating art with other STEAM fields. The study involves 13 students aged 18 to 21 who are pursuing a STEAM education technology degree. Using qualitative research methods, the study finds that although students recognize the importance of art in promoting interdisciplinary thinking and innovation, challenges remain in effectively combining art with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in practice. The difficulties reported by students include differences in language, terminology, and ways of thinking between art and other STEAM fields, as well as a lack of prior interdisciplinary teaching experience. Moreover, in traditional education, art is often isolated as a separate discipline rather than integrated into a comprehensive educational approach. This conventional mindset limits students' ability to connect art with other fields. Therefore, to implement STEAM education more effectively, it is necessary to consciously integrate art into curriculum design and provide more interdisciplinary learning opportunities to help students better understand and apply the role of art within STEAM.

Recognizing the involvement of students in nursing and physiotherapy contexts

This paper examines the critical role that preceptors in physiotherapy and nursing play in clinical settings, emphasising their contributions to patient care and professional growth. Students who participate in clinical internships gain invaluable practical experience that connects their theoretical understanding to real-world applications. Students who work in nursing contexts are exposed to high-pressure environments and develop their clinical decision-making and collaboration abilities through involvement in acute care. Students studying physiotherapy provide a substantial contribution to rehabilitation units, where their involvement aids in patients' recuperation and fosters the development of critical therapeutic skills. The best practices for integrating students into clinical teams are also included in this review, with a focus on the value of a structured orientation, ongoing mentorship, and creating a collaborative atmosphere. It also looks at the difficulties and impediments to successful student involvement, such as institutional limitations, psychological strain, and the requirement for strong coping skills. Retaining patient trust and providing high-quality care depend heavily on ethical factors like informed consent and confidentiality. The evaluation emphasises how clinical exposure helps students become career ready by preparing them for the challenges of professional practice in the long run. To maximise student experiences and results, interdisciplinary learning opportunities and efficient team integration are crucial. The review sheds light on these areas and emphasises the necessity of ongoing funding and innovation in clinical education in order to produce skilled, self-assured, morally upright healthcare workers.

Stakeholder-engaged research: a multidisciplinary historical analysis

The involvement of stakeholders in research – from design, production and communication to use – is recognised as essential to producing impactful research. However, approaches to involving stakeholders in research vary greatly between different fields. This article conducts a multidisciplinary historical analysis of stakeholder-engaged research to offer an integrated perspective on engagement practices across disciplines. It identifies common influences, objectives, trends and challenges, proposing frameworks to support interdisciplinary analysis and understanding. The analysis identifies interconnected approaches that could benefit from mutual learning and exchange. Approaches emerging from sociopolitical movements orient around objectives of empowerment and emancipation, those responding to complexity tend to focus on producing better research that solves societal problems, while accountability-driven approaches centre on research use and impact. This article broadens the diversity of approaches and epistemologies discussed in the literature by including disciplines neglected in previous reviews. Building on the widely cited three-generations model, it proposes a configuration- and complexity-based framework for comparing stakeholder-engaged research approaches, moving beyond the chronological conception of stakeholder-engaged research development. This multidisciplinary historical analysis provides a valuable resource for scholars and practitioners to understand the range of possible approaches to stakeholder engagement, facilitating approach selection for specific use cases and contexts, as well as opportunities for interdisciplinary learning and collaboration.

How Learners Perceive Inter-Disciplinary Dialogic Science Related Learning Experiences: A Mixed-Method Study

Well-designed, dialogic, and interdisciplinary learning opportunities in science related disciplines can promote many educational goals. The difficulty lies in providing these opportunities in schools. Can out-of-school focus days fill the void? Here, we performed a mixed methods study to discover how middle school learners perceive focus days that included dialogic, interdisciplinary activities in mathematics, science, and philosophy, all around socio-scientific dilemmas. We also sought to understand the experiences’ impact on learners’ self-perceived dialogic engagement in the school classroom. We focused on (1) learners’ perceptions and recollections of the dialogic climate during the focus days; (2) the perceived contribution of the three disciplines (mathematics, science and philosophy) to the interdisciplinary focus days; and (3) the focus days’ effects on the dialogic climate in the everyday school environment. Our findings suggest that (1) learners generally considered the focus days as enjoyable and different than their everyday school experience; (2) students did not consider each discipline equally relevant to the focus days’ main topics; and (3) the effects of the focus days were localized, that is, no impact was found on the dialogic climate at school. We discuss implications for promoting interdisciplinary, dialogic science related learning in secondary schools.

Collaborating for success: empowering medical professionals through interprofessional education

Interprofessional education (IPE) refers to training activities to foster collaborative learning among students from different healthcare professions with the intention to augment the quality of patient care activities. Interprofessional education has been linked with significant impact and accounts for significant benefits that it adds to patient care, healthcare professionals, and even the healthcare delivery system as a whole. Medical institutions that are planning to introduce interprofessional education within their settings must adopt a structured framework to ensure effective delivery of IPE that can train students to develop the required set of skills and competencies that are essential for patient-centered practice. A wide range of challenges has been identified that can impact the implementation of effective IPE in a medical college. There is an immense need to overcome these challenges to facilitate IPE by creating an enabling environment that supports interprofessional collaboration. In conclusion, interprofessional education has a special place in the medical education delivery, as it has the potential to encourage collaborative practice, patient-centered care, and effective teamwork among different types of healthcare professionals. Thus, it is the need of the hour that each medical institution should explore opportunities for interdisciplinary learning and adequately prepare their students for the complexities of modern healthcare.

Making engineering education more sustainable through community-based learning and teaching

Community-based learning and teaching offers engineering students a transformative educational experience that extends beyond textbooks, labs and classrooms by engaging students in co-creation activities with local community as part of their formal learning. By immersing themselves in real-world community contexts, engineering students develop practical skills, cultivate a sense of social responsibility, and become well-rounded professionals prepared to tackle the intricate challenges of our ever-evolving world. Community-based learning and teaching takes engineering education beyond the confines of ‘in-house’ produced project proposal briefs, leads to better opportunities for interdisciplinary learning (beyond engineering ‘subdisciplines’) and more opportunities for creativity and flexibility in how engineering problems are approached and solved. As part of an institution-wide study, in this paper we share specific findings from engineering educators, as well as university-wide engagement professionals and those supporting teaching and learning (24 in total), on the barriers and opportunities to community-based learning and teaching approaches. Using semi-structured interviews, we used thematic analysis to generate a series of themes which aligned with four key beneficiaries within engineering education: academics, students and community partners and university. Our findings reveal the values and expectations, employability benefits and infrastructural considerations to implement this type of learning as part of future-facing and sustainable curricula in engineering. This includes areas such as motivation, role of the community, partnership building, development of leadership skills and networking and financial planning and relationship management. The findings also provide useful context-specific recommendations for educators seeking to develop their own sustainable approaches towards facilitating community-based learning and teaching in engineering disciplines.

Bridging comic art and research: lessons from an interdisciplinary collaboration project in a palliative care context

The Dutch graphic novel Naasten, about palliative family caregiving, is the product of an interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers and two comic artists. This paper aims to present lessons, reflections and...

Integrating STEM based Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) to Promote Quality Education: A Systematic Literature Review

Promoting quality education through the integration of STEM-based Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has become a significant area of interest. Integrating STEM-based ESD can enhance the quality of education by providing interdisciplinary learning opportunities that engage students in authentic, hands-on experiences. The objective of this study is to analyze existing empirical research on the utilization of STEM-ESD in order to investigate their effectiveness in fostering quality of education. The review process involved a systematic examination of journal papers published between 2018 and 2023, using both keyword search and snowballing techniques on the Scopus database. A total of 15 journal papers were selected for inclusion in this comprehensive review. The analysis indicates that STEM-ESD program is capable in increasing student self-efficacy and student engagement, STEM-ESD learning support student’s critical thinking skills and system thinking, Implementing Local Wisdom Based ESD can increase student knowledge, STEM learning in Sustainable Food Program as an effort to increase sustainable literacy in student, ESD can increase student’s environmental awareness. In this research there are a few implications such as that STEM-ESD need to be implemented in school curriculum in order to support education that is environmentally insightful.

What Matters Most? How to Find Joy at Work in Post-Acute and Long-Term Care

What Matters Most? How to Find Joy at Work in Post-Acute and Long-Term Care

Learning science through a collaborative invention project in primary school

The study examines students’ disciplinary learning in physics and interdisciplinary science learning opportunities that students encounter during a collaborative invention project. Thirteen student teams (aged 11 to 12, N = 46) designed and constructed a prototype of a technology invention meant to solve one of the challenges students face in daily life. The data was collected from a physics achievement test taken both before and after the invention project and artifacts (student essays and process portfolios) that students constructed during the project. Seven inventions were categorized as physics-intensive and six as non-physics in nature. The change in students’ achievement prior to and after the invention project was rather modest, and the increase was related to the level of physics-intensity of the inventions made during the project. However, the process portfolios revealed various interdisciplinary science learning opportunities and physics learning that could not be identified with the achievement test. Further, the co-occurrence analysis revealed several interdisciplinary learning opportunities that connected physics contents to the interdisciplinary themes. Working with varied materials and technologies and experimenting with them enabled the students to ponder different science topics and perhaps deepen their understanding through creative problem-solving. We conclude that such collaborative invention projects challenge teachers to take an active role in designing invention challenges so as to more explicitly interlink students’ invention processes with science learning. In order to foster students’ science learning opportunities, teachers should intensively evaluate each student-team’s learning throughout the project and use portfolios to reflect on and scaffold their science learning systematically.

Dewey, Implementation, and Creating a Democratic Civic University

Dewey, Implementation, and Creating a Democratic Civic University

An Experimental Journey with Self-Made Online Courses: How does it differ?

An effective learner centric environment that creates opportunities for interdisciplinary learning and skill development on recent technologies with self-learning capability has been the prime focus of present education. With the limited infrastructure and teaching faculty, it is not always possible to give multiple learning opportunities to students. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) have been a boon to the students for developing their knowledge and skills. There are number of national and international MOOC platforms providing various courses offered by different institutions under a learning framework that may differ with different platforms. Though the students gain knowledge through these platforms, they lack the important elements of learning: Personal interaction and motivation by the instructors. This leads to more drop-outs from the courses offered in these platforms. With the intention of providing the personal interaction and motivation, the institution has developed online courses in the trending domain areas under the new initiatives of the academic process of our institution. Eleven online courses have been developed to promote interdisciplinary knowledge relevant to the engineering curriculum and are currently offered to the students of our institution. This paper presents the experience in the design of these online courses and analyses the performance of the learners in enhancing the skill development in the state-of-the-art technologies. There is a need of understanding whether these self-made online courses make a difference when compared to other MOOC platforms. The student feedback, both quantitative and qualitative, and the performance scores have been analyzed for the same. The observed results are encouraging to proceed with this new initiative. Keywords— MOOC platforms; Self-made Online courses; Selflearning; Student experience; Performance assessment

Eight years after the 3-3-4 curriculum reform: The current state of undergraduates’ holistic competency development in Hong Kong

Hong Kong went through a complete reform in its higher education curriculum, incorporating opportunities for interdisciplinary learning and holistic competency development. Almost eight years have passed since the reform, yet little is known about the current state of students’ holistic competency development across different disciplines. Students’ self-evaluation of their capacities in holistic competencies can provide us indirect evidence of student development of these competencies for quality assurance. This study does not only aim to explore how undergraduates in Hong Kong self-assessed their holistic competencies, but also to identify whether there were disciplinary differences. To do so, 2192 undergraduate students from six universities in Hong Kong were surveyed using the validated Students’ Perception of Holistic Competencies Questionnaire. Analysis of the quantitative data revealed that students generally rated themselves strongest in Moral Values but weakest in Interpersonal and Leadership Competencies. However, no substantial mean difference across the different disciplines was evident in all six holistic competencies investigated. The overall results indicated that undergraduates in Hong Kong generally believe that they have a moderately high level of capability in holistic competencies.

Engineering maintenance decision-making with unsupported judgement under operational constraints

In operational engineering maintenance situations, limitations on time, resource or the information available often inhibit rigorous analysis on complex decision problems. Decision-makers who are compelled to act in such circumstances, may be informed by some level of analysis if available, or else may have to rely on their unsupported judgement. This paper presents three engineering risk decision-making case studies across a 20 year span from the rail, aerospace, and military aviation contexts, highlighting the fallibilities of using unsupported judgements in an unstructured manner. To help situate this type of decision situation, we provide a descriptive model of the decision space which extends an existing description from the discipline of decision analysis. Furthermore, to help make and describe the distinction between unsupported and supported thinking, we provide another descriptive model, this time drawing parallels with the distinction made between Type 1 and Type 2 reasoning. This model is an extension of the default-interventionist model from cognitive psychology.The paper concludes that there is a pressing need to provide some form of support to engineering decision-makers facing operational decisions under severe time pressure. While the ultimate aim must be to improve the quality of decision-making, improved transparency is an important additional benefit. Increased emphasis on decision justification and self-awareness are suggested as potential ways of improving this situation. A further contribution of this paper is to identify and strengthen linkages between safety science and two other relevant disciplines, decision analysis and psychology. Such linkages make it easier to communicate across traditional disciplinary boundaries and may provide opportunities for interdisciplinary learning or suggest future directions for collaborative research.

Responding to the Advanced Intellectual Needs of Talented Readers With Interdisciplinary Learning Opportunities

Providing challenging curriculum in a literacy classroom of students whose reading abilities range widely can be a challenge. Integrating interdisciplinary book selections into a self-selected reading program, however, provides students with challenge by engaging them with big ideas. This article describes methods of integrating advanced interdisciplinary pedagogy into a reading approach, called the Schoolwide Enrichment Model in Reading (SEM-R) for talented readers. In this approach, introductions to thematically connected texts during book hooks encourage readers to engage with new topics, authors, and genres. Students build fluency and comprehension through independent reading with the support of teachers who point out connections among texts and ideas. Individual conferences allow teachers to determine each student’s need for support and challenge. Independent explorations allow students to delve into areas of interest and explore connections among topics through further reading, internet research, and writing projects. Investigating interdisciplinary ideas and complex themes can incorporate challenge for all readers but can be especially engaging and enriching for academically talented students who are also advanced readers.

Embedding interdisciplinary learning into the first-year undergraduate curriculum: drivers and barriers in a cross-institutional enhancement project

ABSTRACT Engaging with interdisciplinary learning during higher education (HE) study can provide students with skills and modes of thinking informed by multiple worldviews. Opportunities for interdisciplinary learning in the English HE system are limited; associated primarily with postgraduate study or later undergraduate stages. This paper reports on an enhancement project that sought to engage first-year students with interdisciplinary learning. Drawing on data gathered from staff interviews, student focus groups and module enrolments, we examine drivers and barriers impacting on the planned curriculum transformation. Whilst drivers emerged from many directions (e.g. professional bodies, staff advocates), these were overwhelmed by the barriers – both administrative and ideological. Student responses were mixed. Some would have liked a wider choice of truly interdisciplinary modules, but it was clear many students did not understand the rationale for the modules and felt that they needed more support to participate.

Creating Transformative Interdisciplinary Learning Opportunities for College Students

Collaboration across multiple perspectives enhances the potential for innovative solutions to the complex issues of our time. An interdisciplinary education (IDE) community of practice (CoP) proved to be a catalyst for bringing together interested faculty from across a large public college to create an IDE learning event focused on homelessness. Using a qualitative research approach, we explored the process and impact on student learning. Four main themes emerged: authentic engagement, transcending perspectives, collective responsibility, and cultivating curiosity. The first three themes identify the transformative power of IDE, while the last theme highlights the challenge of remaining open to differing perspectives. We learned the value of incorporating perspectives beyond strictly disciplinary views, such as narratives from those directly impacted by homelessness—to stimulate empathy, transformation, and the will to act.

The Education Reform of Business Students Under the “Internet Plus” Business Model Transformation Trend

The “Internet Plus” business model calls for the optimization of business education in higher education institutes. The fast pace of “Internet Plus” requires business students to have abundant interdisciplinary knowledge, comprehensive modern business skills, habits of lifelong self-learning, and the courage to innovate. This paper proposes that higher education institutes should improve their business education programs in the following ways: firstly, form teaching alliances to provide interdisciplinary learning opportunities for business students; secondly, establish a social practice tutor team from excellent alumni; thirdly, build an online education platform for alumni to develop lifelong autonomous learning habits; finally, explore the three-tutor training model for business students.

Engaging Students in the Learning Process with Game-Based Learning: The Fundamental Concepts

A new approach to learning in the form of educational games has been adopted in recent years, especially in English language teaching. The educational game learning approach used to teach English to non-native English-speakers who use English as a second or foreign language has recorded great success. This study provides an innovative framework for the adoption of the educational games learning approach at university. This is done to ensure lifelong learning and interdisciplinary learning opportunities for students. The study introduces social skills and knowledge training to address topics of gaming and learning. It describes the point at which learning is expected to occur and the role that game elements play in relation to student engagement and educational gaming content interaction. The study further describes the principles governing collaborative learning which are the key pillars for acquiring cognitive and social skills. The contribution of game-based learning is further linked with mindset improvement and growth. The study further examines three theories that are essential to the development of the game-based learning approach: narrative-centered learning theory, problem-solving theory, and engagement theory. Upon providing the theoretical underpinnings, teachers’ perceptions towards the game-based learning approach are further addressed in the paper. The advantages and disadvantages of game-based learning are also discussed.

Factors influencing middle school students' interdisciplinary competence in science education

AbstractScience educators are placing increasing emphasis on the development of students' interdisciplinary competence. This study examined the degree to which disciplinary, cognitive and affective factors could explain students' (N = 385) individual differences in interdisciplinary competence. Multiple linear regression indicated that students' disciplinary knowledge (DK), attitudes toward interdisciplinary approach and interdisciplinary learning opportunities were significant when added to the prediction model. Notably, the results of a semistructured interview and think‐aloud session suggested that students' engineering design knowledge was not robust in their responses. Students' feelings toward interdisciplinary learning affected how they mobilized DK to create comprehensive insight into all aspects relevant to the possible solution. Additionally, students' feelings about the interdisciplinary approach influenced their exposure to interdisciplinary issues outside school and engagement in interdisciplinary learning tasks at school, which affected their integration of scientific ideas across disciplines. The results of this study can inform both the movement toward incorporating an interdisciplinary approach into pedagogy and educators and instructors about the factors and possible mechanisms that may shape students' interdisciplinary competence.