Olivier LEFEBVRE1,*, Alex MITCHELL2, Marissa Kwan Lin E3, Stephen En Rong TAY4, Li Neng LEE5
1Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Design and Engineering (CDE), NUS
2Department of Communications and New Media, College of Humanities and Sciences, NUS
3Centre for English Language Communication, NUS
4Department of the Built Environment, CDE, NUS
5Department of Psychology, College of Humanities and Sciences, NUS
Lefebvre, O. P., Mitchell, A., E, M. K. L., Tay, S. E. R., & Lee, L. N. (2024). Interdisciplinary education in NUS: A scan of current courses and development of an evaluation framework [Paper presentation]. In Higher Education Conference in Singapore (HECS) 2024, 3 December, National University of Singapore. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/hecs/olefebvre-et-al/
SUB-THEME
Others – Interdisciplinary Education
KEYWORDS
Interdisciplinary learning, course design, course evaluation, community engagement
CATEGORY
Paper Presentation
CONTEXT
The establishment of the College of Humanities and Sciences (CHS) in 2020 and the College of Design and Engineering (CDE) in 2022 exemplifies the efforts towards interdisciplinary education in the National University of Singapore (NUS) in response to current problems that require various disciplines to work together (National University of Singapore, 2021). These efforts have produced courses that look beyond the classroom to engage with the wider community.
For example, in the CHS, the course HS2911 “Social Media and Mental Health” provides students with interdisciplinary training to analyse the impact of social media in real-world scenarios. Similarly, in the CDE, the course CDE2501 “Liveable Cities” provides students the opportunity to approach community development through the lens of urban policymakers, planners, architects, engineers, real estate consultants and managers.
While these efforts provide students with an interdisciplinary learning experience, the diverse nature of the courses, along with the lack of a common yardstick in evaluating interdisciplinary education makes it challenging to determine if these efforts have been fruitful, especially in terms of real-world applicability that impacts our communities. Hence, the NUS Teaching Academy (NUSTA) has developed the following research questions:
- What is the current state of interdisciplinary studies at NUS?
- What evaluation metrics could be used to support interdisciplinary courses?
- How can interdisciplinary education in NUS be refined?
METHODOLOGY
An interdisciplinary team within the NUSTA was formed to include views from CHS and CDE. In this study, the operational definition of interdisciplinary learning from the NUS Board of Undergraduate Studies (BUS) was adopted:
Interdisciplinary courses integrate perspectives, theoretic frameworks, concepts, tools, and techniques and approaches from two or more conventional disciplines to understand the chosen theme, its challenges, and potential solutions.
A scan of interdisciplinary courses in both colleges was conducted. Subsequently, the NUS Futures Office was engaged to better develop the study, from which the findings were presented to the NUSTA for feedback and refinement. In developing an evaluation framework, the Accreditation Manual from the Institution of Engineers Singapore was referenced (Institution of Engineers Singapore, n.d.).
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The scan reveals that interdisciplinary courses can be predominantly categorised as either knowledge-/application-focused and adjacent/orthogonal (refer to Figure 1).
Figure 1. Dimensions describing interdisciplinary courses in NUS.
Subsequently, an evaluation framework inspired by the engineering accreditation board (EAB) was developed. The proposed framework consists of 1) interdisciplinary educational objectives (IEOs), and 2) interdisciplinary learning outcomes (ILOs). The former describes the objectives at the programme level, while the latter describes attributes that students should achieve. A total of six ILOs were developed, which are presented in Table 1. Note that courses need not fulfil all the ILOs as courses within the same programme can complement each other to cover the ILOs.
Next, the Course Learning Outcomes (CLOs) in the proposed framework would describe how the specific course maps to the ILOs. An example for CDE2501 “Liveable Cities” is presented in Table 2 as an example.
Table 1
List of interdisciplinary learning outcomes developed in the study
Table 2
List of interdisciplinary learning outcomes developed in the study
CONCLUSION AND SIGNIFICANCE
With these findings, a suggestion towards more application-focused courses is made to provide students to create and test solutions for the community at large. In addition, the proposed framework could be used by faculty members to develop interdisciplinary courses and education programmes, and provide a tool for reflection on current interdisciplinary courses. Finally, the framework could be utilised at the programme level, coupled with alumni and employer surveys and engagements, to assess if the ILOs have been achieved. These suggestions are provided to enhance the interdisciplinary education within NUS on community impact.
REFERENCES
Institution of Engineers Singapore. (n.d) Engineering Accreditation Board Accreditation Manual. https://www.ies.org.sg/Accreditation/EAB10249
National University of Singapore (2021, 27 August). Two new colleges at NUS to deliver flexible, interdisciplinary education more accessibly, and at greater scale https://news.nus.edu.sg/two-new-colleges-at-nus-to-deliver-flexible-interdisciplinary-education-more-accessibly-and-at-greater-scale/