Page 102 - Teaching and learning of interdisciplinary thinking in higher education in engineering

Chapter 5
The overall intended learning outcome of the course on broad IDT was: ‘At the end of this FQM course, students will be able to apply IDT to FQM problems by using the techno- managerial (T-M) approach in the four phases of the interdisciplinary research methodology’. This was a 12-week course taught by two teachers, one from the T-related disciplines (second author) and one from the M-related disciplines (not a member of the author team). This FQM course has a relatively long history as a mandatory course in the interdisciplinary graduate program on FQM. This program is provided at a European university that delivers education in the domain of healthy food and a healthy living environment. This university is reputed to be outstanding in education and research in its multidisciplinary domain. The present design- based research (e.g., Edelson, 2002; McKenney & Reeves, 2012) examined the learning of novice learners using multiple lenses and data. However, the present research did not examine the effectiveness (i.e., is there a systematic effect and why?) or practicality (i.e., what is happening?) of the implemented instructional design (e.g., Nieveen, 2007; Penuel, Confrey, Maloney, & Rupp, 2014; Shavelson et al., 2003), neither the theoretical, nor the methodological issues of design-based research (e.g., Brown, 1992; Collins et al., 2004; Dede, 2004; Kelly, 2004; Penuel, Fishman, Cheng, & Sabelli, 2011; Shavelson et al., 2003).
5.4.2 Data collection
The data collection took place via two reflective journals. One journal was intended to collect data on challenges and strategies. This journal was written by the students during the course, on five occasions occurring at almost regular intervals. Students were asked to reflect on their challenges and strategies during their learning of broad IDT. The journaling activity was based on Brookfield's critical incident method (1995). This method involves critical reflection on incidents that individuals encounter in order that they might learn from these ‘incidents’, ‘difficulties’ or ‘challenges’. The journal format was an author-devised data-collection form
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