How can we assess interdisciplinarity?

When I mark philosophy essays, for example, about Plato’s epistemology in The Republic, I know what to expect from an essay before I begin reading it. In contrast, on the student-centred, interdisciplinary modules that my department runs, I have no idea what to expect. Every student writes about something different, applying disciplines outside of my expertise, with the aim of creating new knowledge. Marking these essays is a very reactive experience, and it takes longer. As daunting as this is for me, the challenges are far greater for students.

However, a well-designed assessment strategy can benefit both staff and students, leading to a richly rewarding and enjoyable experience. In this resource, I outline four principles to help you develop a strategy to effectively assess interdisciplinary work.

Assess the process

Interdisciplinarity is a process, and you must assess this as well as the outcome. This approach avoids rewarding students who stumble upon a good example of integration without fully engaging with the process, and penalising students who engage well with the process but are unsuccessful in their integration.

To ensure successful integration, one must avoid rushing through the early stages. Assessing the early stages of the process is an effective way to slow students down and motivate them to engage with it. This can involve critically evaluating the disciplinary approaches used, reflecting on the interdisciplinary framing of a topic and identifying commonalities and differences between knowledge claims.

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Get the question right

The most common reason for practising interdisciplinarity is to tackle complex topics and questions. These “wicked” or “messy” issues require going beyond a single discipline. Simply framing a topic from multiple disciplines is not enough, as each can only ask and answer a question from its own perspective. Some kind of integration is needed.

Getting the question right is crucial, and dedicating class time to this allows students to practise developing effective interdisciplinary questions. Provide them with example questions and ask whether they invite a disciplinary, multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary response, and how we might improve them. For example:

• How has social media influenced the way we form and maintain social connections? 
• What influence do newspapers have on elections?
• How do climate change-induced migration patterns influence the cultural adaptations of affected communities?

Ensure students actively practise integration

The most common mistake students make when attempting integration is to make a multidisciplinary argument. It’s important to ensure that at least one assessment requires them to practise integration.

This should be reflected in the marking rubric. Having assessment categories specifically devoted to interdisciplinarity is helpful. For instance, one category – “interdisciplinary framing” – might assess whether the chosen disciplinary approaches are justified, and whether the student is aware of their strengths and limitations, as well as whether the question invites an interdisciplinary response. It might also assess why interdisciplinarity is needed.

Another category could focus on integration itself. If the aim is to create new knowledge, does this new knowledge build on and evolve from preceding disciplinary claims? Or, for example, is the integration a mechanical combination of disciplinary claims that fail to cohere? 

Aspects of interdisciplinarity should also be incorporated into all marking categories. For example, most essay-writing rubrics address communication. Good signposting and clear explanations of terms are essential in all good academic writing, but it helps to emphasise that interdisciplinarians must write for multiple audiences and not assume expertise in each one.

Evaluate new knowledge within a framework

One of the biggest challenges with interdisciplinary assessments is deciding how to evaluate the quality of new knowledge. On what grounds can we judge a new, interdisciplinary claim as “good”, rather than “poor” or “very good”?

There are two key considerations here: first, the purpose of interdisciplinarity in the student’s work. For example, if integration is necessary to create new knowledge, does the new claim advance the argument? In practical terms, each discipline asks a different question and focuses on different phenomena, developing the argument in different directions. Successful integration unites these different strands into a single, coherent argument.

Second, does the new claim contain traces of the disciplinary approaches used, but does not belong to either discipline? I encourage students to compare their disciplinary and interdisciplinary claims side by side. This helps determine how distinct the new claim is, revealing, for example, whether they really needed to go outside a discipline to make this new claim.

Interdisciplinarity requires a rich set of skills. A well-designed assessment strategy can tap into these, motivating students to become original thinkers. This not only improves assessment practices but also fosters adaptability and critical thinking abilities essential for tackling the complex problems of our time.

Simon Scott is a liberal arts and natural sciences associate professor at the University of Birmingham.

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