Give students the skills to communicate across disciplines

We’re entering an era in which we’ll need to find ways to adapt to the changing world we’ve created, in order to live in greater harmony with our planet and allow future generations to thrive. 

We need innovative solutions, fresh thinking and to work across disciplinary silos like never before. Universities are natural incubators for this innovation but, even here, we need to push further in terms of how we collaborate, share knowledge and create ideas. Crucially, we need to think about how students are engaging in these processes from day one. 

We need to consider social, environmental and economical pillars of sustainability in an integrated way, to avoid the negative consequences of a narrow focus hampering progress in connected areas. Interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, which I’ll refer to here collectively as cross-disciplinarity, are the engines of sustainability. 

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• Three ways to ensure you are teaching for lasting societal impact
• Embedding the SDGs into curricula via an interdisciplinary approach

What we mean by these terms, however, and how we train students in this space is often left to chance, or the organic development of these skills through experience. We provide the vehicle but neglect the need for driving lessons.

Indeed, the expectation that putting individuals from different disciplines together, or studying a range of disciplines will result in the magical ability to integrate them, often still prevails, without acknowledging the specific skills required to operate in this space. 

Co-creation

My colleagues and I have emphasised a skills-based approach to cross-disciplinarity in our teaching practice for a number of years. An increasingly relevant skill in all degrees, more institutions and employers now recognise its value as a graduate attribute. Combined with the growing need for sustainability literacy, we need to ensure students are able to explicitly engage with the processes that underpin these areas for maximum effectiveness.

During the development of our interdisciplinary degree programmes focused on sustainability (BSc/MSci Environmental Change and Sustainability), my colleagues and I engaged students and staff from allied degrees (including liberal arts and sciences, and environmental sciences) as co-creators for the core modules in first and second year. 

These modules were to provide the skills and space for students to begin to integrate their disciplinary knowledge, but also to learn how to do this to tackle sustainability challenges. We wanted to hear about what students felt they were missing currently, or what they found particularly beneficial, to foster their engagement and development. 

Having a dynamic team of students and staff from diverse disciplines proved an effective mechanism to address and align with the aims of the modules. The outcome was a pair of co-created modules that provide real-world challenges – using the university as a Living Lab in the first year, and external organisations in the second year. 

Be explicit

This model, in itself, is nothing particularly new, with many institutions offering engagement with Living Labs through projects and modules. What we have, however, explicitly included in these modules is training in the skills needed to be successful in this space. How do we ensure that students are not left to create the interdisciplinary magic on their own? 

Early on, they attend workshops on what the different types of cross-disciplinary practice are and where they may be applicable, in addition to collaborative approaches and systems thinking. We explicitly acknowledge the need for disciplinary respect, considered communication, patience, curiosity, openness, reflection and flexibility. 

I cannot express enough how much of a lightbulb moment it is when actively discussing these with students, particularly when we play some simple communication and word play games. Rather than assuming these skills will develop naturally during group work and during the process, presenting them upfront enables students to go into their project work with deliberate consideration of these key elements.

The students learn from a dynamic, cross-disciplinary team, including academics from Earth sciences, philosophy, materials science and biosciences, and professional services staff from estates, facilities and the sustainability team. They gain knowledge about cutting-edge research and gain real-world insight into implementing sustainable solutions in organisations.

In their first year, students apply this knowledge to reviewing the university’s sustainability policies and practices, progressing in their second year to developing solutions for external stakeholders. Reflection on their use of cross-disciplinary skills and their team dynamic is embedded in the assessment, reinforcing its importance. Their project work is then shared with key stakeholders, who provide feedback and explore potential implementation to close the loop of co-creation. 

Not all modules or programmes will have the capacity to embed cross-disciplinary practice to such an extent. However, we have taken some of these elements and embedded them successfully in shorter workshops as part of other modules – for example, in our cross-disciplinary Human Sciences degree introductory module. 

Being explicitly introduced to the mindset and concepts of inter- and trans-disciplinarity, and being able to experience, even briefly, how it feels to be communicate across disciplines, facilitates greater respect and understanding of how to operate in a cross-disciplinary space during their degree. Only by ensuring the development of the foundational skills underpinning the process of developing effective solutions for sustainability will we develop the next generation of students equipped to act as climate-conscious citizens and sustainability leaders for the future. 

Julia Myatt is academic director of sustainability education and professor of collaborative education at the University of Birmingham.

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