Interdisciplinary student collaboration
Facilitating a collaborative learning environment
Interdisciplinary student collaboration
Facilitating a collaborative learning environment
If you choose to apply interdisciplinary learning opportunities, then it is important as a teacher to consider how to facilitate a learning environment that cultivates interdisciplinary collaboration. We know from research that a key challenge in interdisciplinary collaboration is students’ feelings of insecurity and inequality between different disciplines and student roles in collaborative work. As a teacher, you can help facilitate a collaborative learning environment by carefully considering how to overcome known challenges and organise and facilitate conversations with and among students on these issues. Below is a list of questions to consider as a teacher.
How have you tried to facilitate a collaborative learning environment?
Will there be hierarchies between the disciplines involved?
There may be implicit or explicit hierarchies between the disciplines involved in the collaboration. It may be expected that students from one discipline adopt a certain behavior and the students from another discipline take on certain roles in the work. It is important to address such expectations explicitly and facilitate conversations among students on ways to establish collaboration that benefit from the disciplines represented. Among others, teachers can facilitate matching of expectations between disciplines, help deconstruct disciplinary jargon, share and discuss disciplinary difficulties, scaffold learning tasks and interdependencies among group members and offer clear guidelines for participation.
Will students benefit from social activities?
Often, students participating in interdisciplinary learning opportunities will have limited experiences of social interactions with their collaborators. The lack of social experiences might constrain their investment in the interdisciplinary activity. As a teacher, it is important to consider how to develop social relationships among the students.
Student may benefit from:
- Social arrangements in the beginning of their work that focuses on getting to know each other and trusting each other
- Encouragements and feedback from other team members on epistemic and emotional challenges
- Increasing meeting hours on campus for dedicated group work
- Physical and online spaces for meetings and collaboration.
Are certain skills and knowledge foundational?
In some cases, certain skills or knowledge might be foundational for the interdisciplinary collaboration to work. However, as a teacher it can be difficult knowing what the students already know and overcoming student lack of sufficient knowledge during the interdisciplinary learning process. To get off to a good start, consider formulating the expected knowledge or skills explicitly, offer self-assessment tests or develop self-paced learning modules that will allow students to become familiar with the skills or knowledge required prior to the learning experience.