Distant yet Near: Promoting Interdisciplinary Learning in Significantly Diverse Teams through Socially Responsible Projects

Abstract

With global specialization of work units within organizations, interdisciplinary work practices comprised of collaborative efforts between technical and business teams are increasingly common in today's workplace. While higher education has responded by creating opportunities for remote teams to learn from collaborative work, occasions for interaction between remotely situated significantly diverse teams such as business and engineering are few. This study describes a pedagogical offering between U.S.-based business teams and U.K.-based engineering teams that delivers such an experience around mutually dependent, socially responsible projects. Results from student surveys and reflections confirm that the pedagogical design is able to generate perceived interdependence between these diverse teams. Student responses to surveys also suggest that the collaboration is effective in raising student confidence in interdisciplinary and remote team work among students. The study concludes with recommendations for transferability and actualization of interdisciplinary collaboration.

School Portals: An Opportunity for Collaborative Blended Learning

“…Rosenfield (1992) depicts multidisciplinary teamwork as independent in its own disciplines aiming to solve a common problem and contrasts those problems with interdisciplinary teams that work jointly, but from their own perspectives, to address this shared issue. Adya et al (2015) quoting other researches maintain that virtual teams have been researched extensively (e.g., Powell et al, 2004). According to them, few studies have examined virtual teams pedagogically.…”

“…Student responses to surveys suggest that collaborative learning is effective in raising students' level of performance within interdisciplinary and remote teamwork. The study concludes with recommendations for transferability and actualization of interdisciplinary collaboration (Adya et al, 2015).…”

University-Industry Collaboration to Support Lifelong Education

“…This is a common practice in the world of school teacher training [21]. The opportunity to train with collaborative activities in virtual teams is also something with is increasingly asked for, because working methods which transcend time and space are seen as more and more desirable [22]. Collaboration where experts from different companies and organisations are invited to discuss issues with students can function as an additional teaching resource and as a way to include specialist areas in an educational course.…”

Development of A Holistic Cross-Disciplinary Project Course Experience as a Research Platform for the Professional Formation of Engineers

“…For example, engineering capstone courses claim to be multi-disciplinary but in Civil Engineering (CE), such courses almost universally consist of a design problem that incorporates two or more CE domains, falling far short of a true multi-disciplinary or cross-disciplinary experience as advocated in the references cited herein [11]. However, there are at least a few documented examples of courses offered simultaneously to engineering and non-engineering students [12], [13] and courses offered in team settings on open-ended problems [14], [15]. While the references are convincing in their claims of the significant benefits of these course structures, the extent of the formal research-based learning from these course offerings is limited.…”