Session: DEC-03-01 Innovative Practices in Design Education (Other Topics)

Paper Number: 66739

Start Time: August 18, 11:10 AM

66739 - An Investigation of the Influence of Disciplinary Distance in Interdisciplinary Education Through Faculty's Experience 

Interdisciplinary initiatives have been encouraged in higher education curricula, especially in mechanical engineering as a result of industry calls for talents with multidisciplinary competencies to solve complex real-world problems. In the journey of practicing interdisciplinary education, disciplinary distance poses great challenges in teaching and learning. How can interdisciplinary teachers collaborate effectively in teaching? How can students with different backgrounds learn significant knowledge? Collaboration for interdisciplinary education across disciplines is challenging, as co-teachers are usually affiliated with different departments or even schools, and they tend to speak different disciplinary languages and value different disciplinary cultures. Similarly, students in engineering design teams come from different backgrounds. In consistence with Klein’s concepts of Narrow Interdisciplinarity and Wide Interdisciplinarity, we propose the concept of disciplinary distance to better illustrate the differences between disciplines and their implications on interdisciplinary teaching and learning. This paper presents a qualitative analysis of disciplinary distance, as manifested in interdisciplinary education from faculty members’ perspectives. From 13 semi-structured interviews, we find that disciplinary distance plays a vital role in interdisciplinary teaching and learning. It influences team dynamics both in co-teacher teams and student teams. Interdisciplinary course content and interdisciplinary co-teacher teams can also create disciplinary distance that serves as a barrier for interdisciplinary learning. We further find that interdisciplinary collaboration may help to mediate the negative impact of disciplinary distance.

Presenting Author: Xiaoqi Feng Aalto University

Authors:

Xiaoqi Feng Aalto University
Katja Hölttä-Otto Aalto University