Page 101 - Teaching and learning of interdisciplinary thinking in higher education in engineering

Learning challenges, student strategies, and the outcomes of education in interdisciplinary thinking
problem analysis in more depth. In the third phase, the assessment phase, the problem situation is assessed in order to identify solutions, and the fourth phase, the evaluation phase, involves the evaluation of these solutions (Luning & Marcelis, 2009b). The course engaged students in an authentic and ill-structured FQM problem-solving task with particular assignments allocated to each of these four phases. In light of this, the students were engaged on multiple occasions in cognitive endeavours involving IDT analysis and synthesis. This resulted in multiple intermediate reports and in one final individual report. The problem- centred teaching on this course is one of the three pedagogical strategies (i.e., contextualizing, conceptualizing, and problem-centering) that have been identified as appropriate when delivering IDT (Nikitina, 2006).
Figure 5.3 Aligned course design for the learning of IDT, based on Spelt et al. (2015)
Teaching, learning, and assessment: Lectures
Teaching IDT in FQM
Individual tasks
Learning IDT in FQM
Individual presentations
Learning by presenting students’ individual IDT outcomes
Group tasks
Working in student groups to learn IDT
Feedback sessions
Assessing the intermediate IDT outcomes by teachers and students
Self-reflection
Reflecting upon IDT learning and outcomes by students
Specific IDT learning outcomes:
I. Apply
Disciplinary knowledge integration, which is achieved by applying the T-M approach to the FQM problem
II. Construct
Disciplinary knowledge integration, which is achieved by constructing the T-M research instrument
III. Identify
Disciplinary knowledge integration, which is achieved by identifying T and M causes of the FQM problem
IV. Create
Disciplinary knowledge integration, which is achieved by creating the interdisciplinary argument for the best solution to the FQM problem
91