A LITTLE GOES A LONG WAY - OPPORTUNITIES FOR MULTIDISCIPLINARY EDUCATION

DS 83: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education (E&PDE16), Design Education: Collaboration and Cross-Disciplinarity, Aalborg, Denmark, 8th-9th September 2016

Year: 2016
Editor: Erik Bohemia, Ahmed Kovacevic, Lyndon Buck, Christian Tollestrup, Kaare Eriksen, Nis Ovesen
Author: Burden, Hĺkan; Hiort af Ornäs, Viktor
Series: E&PDE
Institution: 1Viktoria Swedish ICT, 2Chalmers University of Technology
Section: Cross-Disciplinary
Page(s): 552-557
ISBN: 978-1-904670-62-9

Abstract

Ambitions about deep interdisciplinary education may face barriers. However, interaction between
student groups does not have to be difficult. We report on a collaboration including more than 200
students from different subject areas, at different curricular stages in a multidisciplinary concept
workshop. By engaging with an external event we avoided some of the challenges involved in aligning
agendas, while remaining true to the ambitions of giving students Concrete Experience and
opportunity to Reflect in and on actions, balancing the ambitions of raising awareness of the relation
between subjects and engaging students in collaborating in problem solving based on skills and
knowledge from their respective discipline. Our results show how collaborating with industry can help
bridge some of the challenges with internal collaboration between students from different disciplines.

Keywords: Professional roles, reflection, experiential learning, concrete experiences.

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