Engineering Commons^™

Interdisciplinary Projects – Moving From Transfer To Transformation In Learning, Anette Kolmos

Plenary Presentations and Doctoral Symposium

In the PBL communities, we have always argued that the deep learning in the projects would compensate for the lack of knowledge from taught courses by the students’ ability to transfer knowledge to new areas. Within the disciplinary discourses, this has proved to be valid as the transfer of learning works within the same language and disciplinary thinking and the projects share similarities. However, we have learned that in an interdisciplinary context, where students are to transform their experiences from a disciplinary to an interdisciplinary context, the students do experience difficulties in leading and managing their projects. This keynote will …

Varieties Of Project-Task Design In Interdisciplinary Engineering Education, Miles Macleod, Coralie Johnson, Jan Van Der Veen

Research Papers

Experience in interdisciplinary problem-solving is considered crucial if engineers are to be equipped to handle modern complex environmental and sustainability challenges. Such challenges cross disciplinary boundaries. Project-based learning is currently a central paradigm for providing that experience. Teams from different disciplines are formed to work together on a specific scientific or engineering projecttask (often a real-world inspired problem). Furthermore according to the paradigm projects should be open-structured to allow students to experience interdisciplinary problem-solving as it might occur in the real world. In this study we explore preliminary results of data collected on 5 project-based modules at a Dutch technical …

The Need For Interdisciplinarity: A Case On Employees’ Perspectives, Dennis Friedrichsen, Maiken Winther, Anette Kolmos

Research Papers

The issue of interdisciplinarity contains disparate nodes of knowledge and practices, including a wealth of information concerning the potential and value of interdisciplinary work. In the context of companies that handle large-scale and complex tasks, interdisciplinarity takes on a real-life role since its presence and importance is readily observable and, as this paper shows, a conscious, deliberate, and highly valued aspect of innovation in companies. Academic literature on the issue of interdisciplinarity asserts that engineers in the future need a wealth of competences, including ability to collaborate in interdisciplinary teams. Aalborg University in Denmark has experimented with interdisciplinarity in various …

Develop An Interdisciplinary Course Using The Twente Interdisciplinarity Toolbox, Miles Macleod, Coralie Johnson, Klaasjan Visscher, Jan Van Der Veen

Workshops

The ability to engage in interdisciplinary research and problem-solving are essential skills for contemporary engineers, however designing and delivering effective learning opportunities to reach these ideals, is often not straightforward [1]. Educators are often faced with a plethora of challenges, and interdisciplinary courses often do not run as smoothly as disciplinary ones. In this workshop, the primary goal was to stimulate participants to consider a few common design scenarios modeled on real-life cases and to apply some of the main design concepts and questions employed by a new online platform the Twente Toolbox which aims to assist instructors with interdisciplinary …

Does Interdisciplinary Creative Coding Boost Creativity? A Mixed Methods Approach, Arne Duyver, Wouter Groeneveld, Kris Aerts

Practice Papers

This study explores the influence of an interdisciplinary intervention on creative problem-solving skills. Literature deems such skills as vital for software engineering (SE) students in higher education. 39 SE students and graphic design (GD) students were randomly paired to work on an open-ended creative coding assignment in p5.js, an online JS-based Processing editor that makes it easy for novices to quickly and easily code visual webpages. Three categories were formed: the test group SE+GD (18 students), and control groups SE+SE (10) and GD+GD (11).

A mixed methods approach was taken to gather and interpret results: Amabile's Consensual Assessment Technique provided …

Engineering Solutions For A More Inclusive Society: A Case Study With Europe-Wide Challenge-Based Learning, Lennart Osterhus, Ulrike Bulmann, Viktoria Constanze Schneider, Kaline Furlan

Practice Papers

Engineering practices directly impact our society and yet, traditional engineering courses often present a lack of emphasis on social and sustainable responsibility. Therefore, a course was designed to increase societal awareness and promote social-conscious engineering practices, and also interdisciplinary and intercultural collaboration. The course followed the concept of challenge-based learning (CBL) and was offered within the framework of the European Consortium of Innovative Universities (ECIU). In such framework, students from 13 European partner universities could join, as well as professionals and citizens as so-called continuous learners. The challenge addressed the issue of an increasingly aging European society and the physical …