We know that communication and group work with people from diverse backgrounds are key components of interdisciplinary learning and research, but how do we logistically make this happen? Whether the goal is to teach an interdisciplinary course or creating a team of physical scientists, economists, and political scientists to investigate an environmental issue, there are several steps that can be taken to have a successful outcome.
In a review of publications that cover teaching interdisciplinary in higher education, Spelt et al. found that important learning environment conditions include: having a balance between disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, and having deeper disciplinary knowledge. For the teacher, being highly experienced in interdisciplinarity, teaching within a community that supports it, and using teacher teams can facilitate the necessary understanding and integration of each other’s disciplines and create a safe environment for mentoring students. They also noted that in teaching an interdisciplinary course there needs to be an overarching goal: achieving interdisciplinary, achieving active learning, or achieving collaboration.
William Newell lays out a further plan for teaching an interdisciplinary course in his book, Designing interdisciplinary courses. The steps to creating an undergraduate interdisciplinary course include:
In some cases, an interdisciplinary course comes together through commonalities in techniques. These would include courses in statistics, or GIS, where students from different backgrounds and disciplines need the tools to do their research.