The bachelor’s program Philosophy, Politics and Economics + History Bachelors (PPE) has an interdisciplinary approach. Therefore, they decided to start the program with one week of teaching interdisciplinary research. This study aimed to measure whether the interdisciplinary understanding of the students improved due to the intervention. 

Background

The UU’s Philosophy, Politics and Economics + History Bachelors (PPE) started in 2018. This program innovated compared to other similar Bachelors by adopting an explicitly interdisciplinary approach. The program devoted a week in the first year to teach students the basic elements of PPE’s interdisciplinary research approach. In this week, students were challenged to go through the steps in order to provide interdisciplinary analysis of food shortages in the fictitious land of Westeros from Game of Thrones. This study aimed to establish whether this training was effective students about interdisciplinarity.

Project description

The research design was a survey among participating 1st year students. We took the survey at the start of the skills week and a couple of weeks after the skills week. The survey consisted of two questions. We coded the first question in line with the stages of interdisciplinary understanding and our teaching practices. The second question was often left blank and added little to the analysis.

Aims

The aim is to gain a better understanding of the newly developed PPE skills week on students’ interdisciplinary understanding and draw lessons on how to improve the week. Research question: In how far did the PPE skills week improve students’ interdisciplinary understanding?

Results

The results indicate a significant improvement in students understanding. In a group of 27 students, in which we could link both results, four times more students identified integration as a crucial part of interdisciplinarity in the second measurement than the first. The other 19 (survey moment #1) and 20 students (survey moment #2) responded without a clear identifier. Still there was a significant increase in this group: over 2,5 times more students mentioned
integration.

Reflection: lessons learned

The conclusion is that the students’ interdisciplinary understanding increased significantly due to this teaching intervention. Moreover, we were able to identify bottlenecks, which we will seek to improve upon in the future. The main recommendation is that a skills week is a very effective tool to teach students about
interdisciplinarity, which might benefit interdisciplinary minors and electives with little time available with interdisciplinary aspirations.

Take home message

Students’ interdisciplinary understanding increases significantly due to teaching students the basic elements of PPE’s interdisciplinary research approach.