A comprehensive model for interdisciplinary teaching

We live in a world facing complex, multifaceted challenges, so higher education must prepare students to think beyond single disciplines. Teaching through an interdisciplinary lens equips students with the ability to synthesise diverse perspectives, engage in collaborative problem-solving and navigate uncertainty. By doing this, we not only broaden students’ intellectual horizons but foster the development of essential skills such as teamwork, critical thinking and adaptability.

Here, I’ll outline a comprehensive strategy for interdisciplinary teaching, drawing on insights from the Interdisciplinary Higher Education Program of the Interdisciplinary Space at my institution.

Framing interdisciplinary teaching

Interdisciplinary teaching begins with a shift in perspective, recognising that a single discipline cannot fully address real-world problems. In this context, instructors must adopt a dual role, as both content experts and integrative learning enablers.

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The Interdisciplinary Higher Education Program offers a practical model for this shift and operates with a dual focus on both faculty development and student engagement. It guides faculty members through a structured process that combines experiential learning with collaborative course design.

Faculty workshops

The programme requires faculty members to participate in an intensive workshop, where they experience the same interdisciplinary processes they will later teach to students. This experiential strategy fosters deeper understanding of interdisciplinary course design.

We group teachers into highly diverse teams based on discipline, experience and personal traits. Alternatively, in the case of research groups, researchers from different disciplines attend the workshop to form a team. The teams collaborate to design interdisciplinary courses and we guide them to ensure they integrate multiple perspectives into real-world problem-solving contexts. 

Six-pillar framework

During the workshop, we introduce the participants to a six-pillar pedagogical framework that ensures consistency in teaching approaches across courses. It allows teachers to focus on identifying a problem and relevant content knowledge from each discipline. The six pillars are:

1. Interdisciplinarity: Encourage the integration of knowledge across different fields. Faculty teams collaboratively design undergraduate courses by bringing distinct perspectives from their disciplines. Students, in turn, engage in solving complex problems requiring cross-disciplinary synthesis. 

2. Problem-based learning: Faculty teams collaboratively select and narrow ill-structured problems to serve as core components of their courses. The programme introduces strategies from design thinking and agile methodologies to guide this process. Later, students work on solving these problems using input from multiple disciplines.

3. Academic motivation: Motivation is crucial for sustaining engagement. To teach this subject, the programme uses Bret Jones’ MUSIC Model of Academic Motivation, which identifies five key components. The first component, empowerment, occurs when students feel they have control over their learning environment, fostering a sense of autonomy. The second, usefulness, emphasises the importance of students perceiving coursework as relevant to their future aspirations, which enhances their commitment to learning. Success focuses on cultivating a belief that students can achieve challenging but attainable tasks, boosting their persistence and effort. Interest highlights the value of engaging instructional methods that capture and maintain students’ attention and curiosity. Lastly, caring underscores the motivational impact of students feeling supported by their instructors and peers, creating a positive and encouraging learning atmosphere. 

4. Teamwork knowledge: The programme emphasises the importance of teaching about team dynamics in interdisciplinary courses. Participants must navigate the challenges of collaborating with individuals from diverse disciplines, each contributing their own knowledge, skills and perspectives. We introduce faculty to core concepts from social and organisational psychology, including trust, cohesion, psychological safety and conflict. Alongside that, the programme introduces team-building exercises and communication challenges to highlight the importance of collaboration and mutual understanding. A key part of the programme is engaging in reflection activities to analyse team interactions, identify areas for improvement and provide feedback to peers.

5. Team building: Building a sense of community is essential in interdisciplinary courses. The programme introduces activities that help faculty in the workshop and, later, students on the courses, cultivate a shared identity as members of an interdisciplinary learning community, rather than solely as representatives of their disciplines. 

6. Stress management: Interdisciplinary courses can be intensive and demanding. The programme teaches short, energising activities during long sessions to manage stress and reduce fatigue. Teachers learn to balance analytical and social tasks, alternating between cognitively demanding tasks and activities that promote social interaction and creativity. 

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Core considerations for interdisciplinary course design

Establishing shared goals

Faculty teams should jointly establish what students are expected to learn in terms of content and skills. These goals should emphasise the ability to connect ideas across disciplines, effective teamwork and communication, and fostering reflexivity and adaptability.

Creating stops for knowledge integration

Students often struggle with integrating knowledge. To support this process, instructors can:

• Instead of teaching modules by discipline, which would defeat the programme’s purpose, arrange the modules by integration of learning, so the teams reach checkpoints along the way to the overall solution.
• Use tools, such as concept maps, to encourage participants to create visual representations of how concepts from different fields connect.
• Create opportunities for participants to explain concepts from their fields to peers from other disciplines, facilitating cross-disciplinary dialogue.

Assessment 

Assessment in interdisciplinary courses should assess integrative thinking and collaboration. Useful assessment tools include:

• Problem-solving exercises: Open-ended exercises designed to assess students’ ability to synthesise ideas across disciplines.
• Rubrics: These can be used to evaluate students’ integrative thinking, collaboration and problem-solving abilities.
• Peer evaluation feedback: Provides insight into students’ teamwork skills.
• Reflective writing: Encourages students to analyse their learning process.
• Standardised questionnaires: Assess overall learning outcomes and course impact.

Ongoing faculty support 

After the workshop, we provide ongoing faculty support, including mentoring and peer feedback sessions, to refine course design and assist during course implementation. 

Through the programme, we have demonstrated that faculty benefit from learning and applying diverse pedagogical approaches that foster interdisciplinary collaboration in a supportive environment. 

For the students taught by our participants, the programme has shown significant positive outcomes regarding skill development, including teamwork, confidence in idea exploration with other people and a greater ability to tackle unfamiliar problems.

Ana Corbacho is assistant professor at Espacio Interdisciplinario, Universidad de la República.

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