the InMind blog

Learning interdisciplinarity: The solution to societal challenges?

• written by Sabrina Krys & Mirjam Braßler

Editorial Assistants: Sameeksha Shukla and Elena Benini

Note: An earlier version of this blog post has been published in the German version of In-Mind.

Anyone who has worked in a team knows the challenges: differing perspectives often clash. However, what happens when it’s not just opinions that diverge, but entire disciplines? How can we learn to think beyond boundaries and what competencies can help us do so?

Figure 1.

Imagine that you want to reduce the amount of plastic waste in your community. Wherever you look, you see plastic bottles, disposable packaging, and coffee cups that end up as trash after just one use. Finding a solution is complex, and can hardly be accomplished alone. It requires people from different disciplines, as each perspective contributes an important part to the solution:

• Environmental scientists and chemists are aware of the harm caused by plastic and the available alternatives. However, without input from industry experts, their solutions could be too costly. And without designers, the alternatives could be unattractive.
• Psychologists understand why people choose plastic products and how their behavior can be influenced. However, without communication experts, their insights will remain unused.
• Legal experts are familiar with the relevant requirements and helpful regulations. However, without marketing professionals, people would be bothered by regulations instead of voluntarily acting more sustainably.

Without collaboration, either good ideas remain just that, or the solutions are impractical. For the project to succeed, everyone has to think beyond their own area of expertise and combine their knowledge. And that is exactly what interdisciplinary competence is!

How to develop interdisciplinary competence

But how can we learn to think outside the box? This is exactly the area in which interdisciplinary problem-based learning, or iPBL, comes into play (Braßler & Dettmers, 2017). Learners work in interdisciplinary groups for several months, tackling various complex problems (e.g., plastic waste in the community). They go through various steps in the process:

1. At the beginning, the group clarifies any unclear terms to ensure everyone has a shared understanding.
2. Then, they all share their prior knowledge and collect open questions: Why do people use plastic? Are there any affordable alternatives? How could we create incentives for sustainable consumption?
3. The group members then dive into individual research, bring new findings back to the group, and link them to their previous knowledge.

Interdisciplinary problem-based learning therefore focuses on active learning: new knowledge is created by incorporating and linking different perspectives on a problem. The facilitator accompanies this process, encouraging reflection and exchange.

Insights from research

A study has shown that students who collaborate with other disciplines learn to think beyond their usual perspectives (Braßler & Dettmers, 2017). The study investigated how different teaching methods affect students' interdisciplinary competence. For this purpose, 18 courses were selected at three universities in northern Germany. One condition for the course selection was that the students had to work together in a team with fellow students from other disciplines - in other words, in an interdisciplinary team - throughout the semester. A total of 278 students from various disciplines (e.g., psychology, law and computer science) in their fifth semester or above took part. Almost 56% of the participants were women. Students completed a questionnaire at the beginning and end of the semester to assess their interdisciplinary competence. Researchers monitored the courses through regular visits, during which they observed the learning sessions and talked to lecturers and students to check compliance with the teaching methods.
The main result: compared to their self-assessment before the start of the collaboration, the students reported that they were better able to recognize, think through and link different disciplinary perspectives after interdisciplinary problem solving. They also stated that they were now more capable of questioning their own thinking and adapting it flexibly. There appears to be a significant improvement in their understanding of how other disciplines work, which methods are used there, and where their limitations lie (Lattuca et al., 2013).
In short: Interdisciplinary competence does mean more than just combining knowledge from different disciplines. It also involves questioning one's own disciplinary thinking and adapting it when necessary. At the same time, it is also about understanding how different disciplines work together and complement each other.

The bigger picture

Our society is currently facing a number of challenges, including climate change, global health crises, international conflicts, and rapid advances in artificial intelligence. Addressing these challenges effectively requires interdisciplinary collaboration. We should therefore promote our interdisciplinary competence specifically – for example through problem-based learning. Learning interdisciplinarity: one solution to the challenges of our time!

Bibliography

Braßler, M., & Dettmers, J. (2017). How to enhance interdisciplinary competence – Interdisciplinary Problem-Based Learning versus Interdisciplinary Project-Based Learning. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning, 11(2). https://doi.org/10.7771/1541-5015.1686
Lattuca, L., Knight, D., & Bergom, I. (2013). Developing a measure of interdisciplinary competence. International Journal of Engineering Education, 29(3), 726–739. http://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--21173

Figure Source

Figure 1 generated with Gemini