LEE Chee Keng
NUS College
Lee, C. K. (2023). Conditions for interdisciplinary learning–Some preliminary reflections on designing and facilitating “Global Experience Tokyo: City, Culture and Technology” [Lightning talk]. In Higher Education Campus Conference (HECC) 2023, 7 December, National University of Singapore. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/hecc2023proceedings/conditions-for-interdisciplinary-learning-some-preliminary-reflections-on-designing-and-facilitating-global-experience-tokyo-city-culture-and-technology/
SUB-THEME
Interdisciplinarity and Education
KEYWORDS
Interdisciplinary, learning, experiential learning, independent study
CATEGORY
Lightning Talks
ABSTRACT
This Lighting Talk explores the sub-theme of Interdisciplinarity and Education by reflecting on the design and facilitation experience of Global Experience Tokyo (GEx Tokyo) 2023, guided by the questions:1) What are the conditions necessary for effective interdisciplinary learning? 2) What are the possible preparations that could bring about these conditions?
Global Experience (GEx) is a specially curated course in which students spend a month living in and studying an international city. Each GEx is guided by a theme. The theme for GEx Tokyo is “City, Culture and Technology.” The objective of the course is to allow students to examine and reflect on the dynamic and transformative relationship between city, culture, and technology through a set of interweaving and interdisciplinary encounters and site visits. In GEx Tokyo 2023, students attended seminars with guest professors, workshops with practitioners, masterclasses with experts, and field visits to start-ups, research centres, and government offices. Prior to arriving in Tokyo, students attended preparatory seminars that familiarise them with some of the anticipated topics and social situations in GEx Tokyo. Students were also required to propose an independent study research project related to the theme of GEx Tokyo prior to arriving in Tokyo.
Based on discussions with students during independent research project consultations, it became apparent that despite the explicitly stated course objective and the purposeful layering of the programme itineraries, students were not drawing upon the interdisciplinary itineraries to deepen and enrich their independent study projects. Preliminary student feedback suggests that students formulated their Independent Study proposals with disciplinary-based frames and experienced the diverse GEx Tokyo itineraries largely through the lens of their Independent Study project. Tellingly, they found all the experts they met on the trip knowledgeable but indicated that few helped them achieve their learning objectives.
This experience prompted the questions I would like to contemplate in this Lighting Talk:
- What are the conditions necessary for effective interdisciplinary learning in general and for GEx Tokyo in particular?
- What are the possible preparations that could bring about these conditions?
Discussions on interdisciplinarity and education often focus on how specific disciplines can connect to and benefit from interdisciplinary links, as well as how interdisciplinary links can be built across different disciplines in a course. Such discussions extend into how to operationalise interdisciplinary learning objectives by describing and assessing interdisciplinary learning.
This Lighting Talk attempts to reflect on GEx Tokyo 2023 student feedback through the integrated lens of literature examining the entanglement of personal epistemologies and emotions in students’ thinking, and those discussing learning environments, to contemplate the conditions that could motivate and facilitate effective interdisciplinary learning.