Interdisciplinarity

Uncomfortable Conversations: A Pedagogy Of Discomfort Within Environmental And Sustainability Education For Future Wellbeing

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Menusha DE SILVA 

Department of Geography
Faculty of Arts and Social Science (FASS), NUS

geokmds@nus.edu.sg 

De Silva, M. (2024). Uncomfortable conversations: A pedagogy of discomfort within environmental and sustainability education for future wellbeing [Lightning talk]. In Higher Education Conference in Singapore (HECS) 2024, 3 December, National University of Singapore. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/hecs/hecs2024-mdsilva/

SUB-THEME

Opportunities from Wellbeing 

KEYWORDS

Discomfort, environmental and sustainability education, emotions, interdisciplinarity, reflection  

CATEGORY

Lightning Talk

EXTENDED ABSTRACT

Interdisciplinary courses (IDCs) under the College of Humanities and Sciences’ (CHS) Common Curriculum aim to equip students with skills required to navigate a world that is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) (Tan, 2022). Through cross-disciplinary conversations with instructors and peers, students are expected to improve their skills in solving complex problems and real-world issues such as climate change—the contextual focus of this presentation. Ideally, these courses will nurture in students traits of adaptability, resilience, and empathy in order to ensure their wellbeing when transitioning to work life and facing challenges in their everyday lives (CHS, n.d).  

 

Yet, pedagogical work on environmental and sustainability education show that learning about the environmental crisis and climate change may cause some students to experience eco-anxiety (Sims et al., 2020).  Pfautsch and Gray (2017) argue that since a large proportion of people are aware but unengaged about the environmental crisis, feelings of disempowerment and fear can also be productive. In addition, I posit that discussing sustainable solutions could also lead to negative emotions since students would have to grapple with contradictions within discourses on how to best address these environmental issues, i.e. the lack of evidence undergirding prevalent policies.  

 

Since environmental and sustainability education can be an emotionally wrought process, through the case of the proposed IDC “Restoring Human-Nature Connections”, I examine how the classroom can be a safe space for students to develop skills that would contribute to their wellbeing in the future. I propose an assessment structure that recreates a real life decision-making process where students would have to confront the ambiguities and complexities surrounding real-world initiatives and the uncertain outcomes generated through them. Students will have to rank their peers’ proposed solutions to an environmental problem while explaining the trade-offs they made as a group when deciding the optimal solution. This teaching approach is informed by Boler’s (1999) concept “a pedagogy of discomfort” (cited in Ojala, 2021), which recognises that unpleasant emotions would be generated when learning about sensitive and controversial societal issues, and that students need to critically reflect on their emotional responses to uncover how they relate to the issue. 

 

I suggest that this process of negotiating with peers from different disciplinary backgrounds require students to experience the difficulties of having conversations with individuals with different ideological and/or subject positions, and acknowledge the challenges of seeking sustainable and equitable solutions. I argue that the discomfort experienced through this learning exercise can potentially lead to better emotional resilience outside of the classroom, and develop the skill to handle conflict of opinions constructively. As such, the classroom can be a safe space for students to experience some level of discomfort in order to facilitate their future wellbeing. 

REFERENCES

College of Humanities and Sciences (n.d.) CHS Common Curriculum. https://chs.nus.edu.sg/programmes/common-curriculum/  

Ojala, M. (2021). Safe spaces or a pedagogy of discomfort? Senior high-school teachers’ meta-emotion philosophies and climate change education. The Journal of Environmental Education, 52(1), 40-52. https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2020.1845589

Pfautsch, S., & Gray, T. (2017). Low factual understanding and high anxiety about climate warming impedes university students to become sustainability stewards: An Australian case study. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 18(7), 1157-1175. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/IJSHE-09-2016-0179

Sims, L., Rocque, R., & Desmarais, M. É. (2020). Enabling students to face the environmental crisis and climate change with resilience: inclusive environmental and sustainability education approaches and strategies for coping with eco-anxiety. International Journal of Higher Education and Sustainability, 3(2), 112-131. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJHES.2020.113059

Tan, E. C. (2022, 5 November) The Half-life of Knowledge. https://chs.nus.edu.sg/2022/11/05/half-life-of-knowledge/

Does Grading an Assignment Matter for Student Engagement – A Case Study in an Interdisciplinary Course with Science and Humanities

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LIU Mei Hui1 and Stephen En Rong TAY2

1Department of Food Science and Technology, College of Humanities and Sciences, NUS
2Department of the Built Environment, College of Design and Engineering (CDE), NUS

fstlmh@nus.edu.sg; stephen.tay@nus.edu.sg

 

Liu, M. H., & Tay, S. E. R. (2024). Does grading an assignment matter for student engagement: A case study in an interdisciplinary course with science and humanities [Paper presentation]. In Higher Education Conference in Singapore (HECS) 2024, 3 December, National University of Singapore. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/hecs/hecs2024-liu-tay/

SUB-THEME

Opportunities from Engaging Communities

 

KEYWORDS

Interdisciplinarity, peer learning, student-generated questions, assessment, feedback

 

CATEGORY

Paper Presentation 

 

INTRODUCTION

The Scientific Inquiry II (SI2) course – HSI2007 “Deconstructing Food” – employed scenario-based student-generated questions and answers (sb-SGQA) previously to encourage interdisciplinary learning (Tay & Liu, 2023). In the activity, students were tasked to develop questions and answers based on the learning objectives that are contextualised to community examples beyond the classroom. This contextualisation to a scenario helps develop authentic assessment (Wiggins, 1990). To further increase student engagement with the sb-SGQA activity, the sb-SGQA activity changed to a graded assignment in AY2023/24 Semester 1. This was motivated by literature that reports how a graded assignment motivates students in their learning, specifically as an extrinsic motivator, in which students are incentivised to work towards a reward (i.e. good grade) (Docan, 2006; Harlen et al., 2002; Schinske & Tanner, 2014). Hence, this study aims to answer the following questions:

  1. Does the graded sb-SGQA improve student performance, evidenced through a comparison of the continual assessment marks between the graded and ungraded cohorts?
  2. What are students’ perceptions of the sb-SGQA approach from both the graded and ungraded cohorts?

METHODOLOGY

The graded sb-SGQA (20% weightage) was adopted in AY2023/24 Semester 1, and results were compared with data from AY2022/23 Semester 2, when the sb-SGQA was not graded. Across both cohorts, two continual assessment (CA) components, a MCQ Quiz (20% weightage) and Individual Essay (20% weightage) were analysed as these two components were present in both cohorts. Numerical data was analysed with JASP, an open-source statistical package (Love et al., 2019).

RESULTS

In Figure 1, students analysed and discussed differences between meals served to students in the East and West differ, and Figure 2 demonstrates how students employed content materials from the online community for a case study. Through these questions, students demonstrated concepts of nutrition, food microbiology (e.g., fermented foods), and health-related information.

HECS2024-a20-Fig1

Figure 1. Example of students’ work analysing meals in other communities

 

HECS2024-a20-Fig2

Figure 2. Student work in question-and-answer generation through engaging the digital community.

Though formal evidence has not been collected, we believe the project is impactful based on several observations. Participants demonstrate increased confidence and curiosity as they develop coding and robotics skills, particularly after successfully completing projects or engaging in hackathons. Exposure to tech fairs broadens their understanding of technology’s potential and encourages further exploration. These activities are designed to spark interest in technology and create a positive learning environment, which we believe is key to fostering long-term engagement in the field.

 

When the CA scores were analysed, a statistically significant difference was observed for the MCQ Quiz but not for the Individual Essay (refer to Table 1). This could be attributed to the open-ended nature of the Individual Essay assessment component, which requires student competencies in articulation of ideas and positioning their views, which may have masked the effect.

Table 1
Score comparisons for MCQ Quiz, Individual Essay, and CA across the graded (n=102) and ungraded (n=184) cohorts

HECS2024-a20-Table1

 

Table 2 represents student feedback on the sb-SGQA approach. Majority of the students in both the graded and ungraded cohorts shared that the sb-SGQA has helped with their learning. Though the activity was challenging, the students enjoyed it and recommended it for future courses. The qualitative feedback (refer to Table 3) revealed how Humanities and Sciences students appreciated how their diverse views could be incorporated through the sb-SGQA (Humanities 1, Humanities 3, Science 3). The sb-SGQA also forces students to reflect deeper on the course materials to develop meaningful questions and answers, thus aiding their learning (Humanities 2, Science 1). The contextualisation of the learning objectives to community examples was appreciated by students (Humanities 4, Science 2). The approach was also utilised by students to integrate topics taught through the entire course, thus allowing students to appreciate the course as a whole (Science 4). The themes were similar in the ungraded cohorts.

 

Table 2
Student feedback from the graded (left) and ungraded (right) cohorts separated by “/”. Responses represented as a percentage, and were obtained from 102 respondents in the graded cohort and 120 respondents in the ungraded cohort. The modes are bolded for highlight

HECS2024-a20-Table2

 

Table 3
Qualitative feedback from Humanities and Science students in the graded cohort

HECS2024-a20-Table3

CONCLUSION AND SIGNIFICANCE

The change to a graded assignment increased students’ performance in the MCQ Quiz segment but not the Individual Essay segment. Student perceptions to the approach were generally positive across both the graded and ungraded cohorts. The results suggest that students’ perceived value of a learning activity may not be solely dependent on whether the learning activity is graded or not. The significance of this study lies in how the use of sb-SGQA could aid with community engagement in the creation of case studies without software and hardware costs involved.

REFERENCES

Docan, T. N. (2006). Positive and negative incentives in the classroom: An analysis of grading systems and student motivation. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 6, 21-40. https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/josotl/article/view/1668/1666

Harlen, W., Crick, R. D., Broadfoot, P., Daugherty, R., Gardner, J., James, M., & Stobart, G. (2002). A systematic review of the impact of summative assessment and tests on students’ motivation for learning. https://dspace.stir.ac.uk/bitstream/1893/19607/1/SysRevImpSummativeAssessment2002.pdf

Love, J., Selker, R., Marsman, M., Jamil, T., Dropmann, D., Verhagen, J., Ly, A., Gronau, Q. F., Šmíra, M., Epskamp, S., Matzke, D., Wild, A., Knight, P., Rouder, J. N., Morey, R. D., & Wagenmakers, E.-J. (2019). JASP: Graphical Statistical Software for Common Statistical Designs. Journal of Statistical Software, 88(2), 1 – 17. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v088.i02

Schinske, J., & Tanner, K. (2014). Teaching more by grading less (or differently). CBE Life Sci Educ, 13(2), 159-166. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.cbe-14-03-0054

Tay, E. R. S., & Liu, M. H. (2023, 7 December 2023). Exploratory implementation of scenario-based student-generated questions for students from the humanities and sciences in a scientific inquiry course. Higher Education Campus Conference (HECC) 2023, Singapore. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/hecc2023proceedings/exploratory-implementation-of-scenario-based-student-generated-questions-for-students-from-the-humanities-and-sciences-in-a-scientific-inquiry-course/

Wiggins, G. (1990). The case for authentic assessment. Practical Assessment, Research and Evaluation, 2, 1-3. https://doi.org/10.7275/ffb1-mm19

Decoding the Disciplines: Nurturing Malleable Minds of Educators and Students in Arts and Sciences

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Hong, L.1*, Radics, G.B.2*, Chng, H.T.1, Murphy, M.3, Yang A.J.4, Muhammad, N.5, Lim, A.2, Estes, J.2, Ragupathi, K.6, Gregorio, V.L.2, Kassem, A.2, Lee, E.T.T.7, Yudistira, M.7,  Mitchell, A.8, Sivasothi, N.9, Neo, D.M.1

1Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Faculty of Science (FOS), NUS
2Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS), NUS
3Department of English, Linguistics & Theatre Studies, FASS, NUS
4Department of Physics, FOS, NUS
5Department of Geography, FASS, NUS
6Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Technology (CTLT), NUS
7Department of Chemistry, FOS, NUS
8Department of Communications and New Media, FASS, NUS
9Department of Biological Sciences, FOS, NUS

*lin.hong@nus.edu.sg
*radics@nus.edu.sg

Hong, L., Radics, G.B., Chng, H.T., Murphy, M., Yang A.J., Muhammad, N., Lim, A., Estes, J., Ragupathi, K., Gregorio, V.L., Kassem, A., Lee, E.T.T., Yudistira, M.,  Mitchell, A., Sivasothi, N., & Neo, D.M. (2024). Decoding the Disciplines: Nurturing Malleable Minds of Educators and Students in Arts and Sciences [Lightning Talk]. In Higher Education Conference in Singapore (HECS) 2024, 3 December, National University of Singapore. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/hecs/hecs2024-hong-et-al

 

SUB-THEME

Others

KEYWORDS

Interdisciplinarity, adaptability, teaching strategies, dialectic thinking, neuroplasticity

CATEGORY

Lightning Talk

EXTENDED ABSTRACT

Oppenheimer did not foresee the impact of his creation, and neither did Great Britain, who bartered opium for tea, foresee the devastation on human health across China. In the modern era, arts students tend to approach science topics with hesitation while students with a background in science tend to overlook humanity with pragmatic solutions. Furthermore, embedded in the Singaporean education system is a hierarchy of disciplines, fostered by rigid testing and grade point cut-offs for specific majors. When faced with an opposing discipline – an unknown, an unfamiliarity – students tend to hold on to certain biases and fears that ultimately need to be overcome to nurture malleable and interdisciplinary thinking (Christou and Judy Wearing, 2015).

 

The College of Humanities and Sciences (CHS) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) has introduced mandatory interdisciplinary courses (IDC) to the curriculum with some pushback from students, and incomplete guidance for educators. Starting in 2018 and now with 22 IDCs offered as of the Academic Year 2024/2025, our team of IDC course coordinators in the Teaching Enhancement Grants (TEG): Learning Community have been engaging in group sharing and deep conversations on the status of the program, our teaching and student reception. Based on these discussions, the consenting course coordinators systematically probe into the effectiveness of current teaching strategies including teaching activities and assessments through student surveys (containing a mixture of Likert scales and open-ended questions) and peer review of each other’s classes. We investigate interdisciplinary knowledge (disciplinary grounding, perspective taking, and common ground and integration) and core interdisciplinary skills (critical reflection, collaboration, communication, adaptability, and creativity) (Wiegant, 2020; Mansilla and Duraising, 2007). Open-ended responses are analysed through coding the interdisciplinary themes.

 

Preliminary results have shown that students are quite resistant to non-traditional teaching strategies that they are unfamiliar with, including debates and class interactions. Despite this, their appreciation and understanding of interdisciplinarity knowledge and skills are positive through these activities. It will be a matter of now building up their confidence over the course to reduce their anxieties and enable them to be more comfortable with the uncertainties that are inherent in interdisciplinary education.

 

With a better understanding of CHS student motivations and their preferences for learning, we can tailor our teaching strategies to promote a positive learning environment for developing their interdisciplinary learning and knowledge.

 

REFERENCES

Christou, T. M., & Wearing, J. (2015). An interdisciplinary curriculum conversation on fear and learning. In education. 21(1), 42-58. https://doi.org/10.37119/ojs2015.v21i1.203

Mansilla, V. B., & Duraising, E. D. (2007). Targeted assessment of students’ interdisciplinary work: An empirically grounded framework proposed. The Journal of Higher Education. 78(1), 215-237. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2007.11780874

Wiegant, F. & Team Interdisciplinary and community engaged learning. (2020). Matrix with assessment rubrics of interdisciplinary learning goals & competencies. Utrecht University. https://www.uu.nl/en/education/educational-development-training/knowledge-dossier/how-do-you-assess-interdisciplinary-skills

 

Leveraging AI Tools for Engagement and Higher Learning Outcomes: An Exploratory Study

cdtlsd Paper Presentations , , ,

Sadaf Ansari

Ridge View Residential College (RVRC)

sadaf@nus.edu.sg

 

Ansari, S. (2024). Leveraging AI tools for engagement and higher learning outcomes: An exploratory study [Paper presentation]. In Higher Education Conference in Singapore (HECS) 2024, 3 December, National University of Singapore. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/hecs/hecs2024-s-ansari/

SUB-THEME

Opportunities from Generative AI

 

KEYWORDS

Higher-order learning, AI, interdisciplinarity

 

CATEGORY

Paper Presentation 

 

EXTENDED ABSTRACT

The release of open-access Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has made its use in higher education inevitable (Mollick, 2024). Educators’ initial concerns, which centred on unreliability and plagiarism, have since been replaced by universities embracing the technology, with a focus on the positive potential of AI in learning (NUS AI COP, 2023; CTI Cornell, 2023). Emerging literature on the use of open-access GenAI indicates the possibilities for enhancing student learning and transfer of knowledge when paired with specific inquiry-related skills such as critical thinking and ideation (Gregersen, 2023; Mollick, 2024). This is rapidly shifting the pedagogic focus in using GenAI from ‘what works’ to the possibilities offered by ‘what if?” (Ross, 2023). Set within such a context, this exploratory case study evaluated the impact of integrating GenAI on student engagement and higher-order learning outcomes for an interdisciplinary course.

 

BACKGROUND

Recent studies indicate that the use of GenAI can positively impact transfer; once students have gained foundational knowledge, GenAI can provide a time-efficient mode to test multiple ideas for complex problems, beyond traditional modes (Eapen, 2023; Mollick, 2022). This can enhance student engagement by simplifying the process of knowledge application, and build their proficiency in cognitively-demanding higher learning outcomes (Kirschner et al., 2022)

 

PROJECT AIMS AND SCOPE

The study was conducted with 32 students reading an interdisciplinary NUS General Education course—RVSS1000 “Exploring Sense of Place”—taught in small classes of 14-18 students using a seminar-style format. The class composition was multidisciplinary; it included students in their first and second year of undergraduate studies from six different NUS faculties. The course instructor’s observations from teaching the course across several semesters highlighted that students often lacked engagement and struggled with the cognitive demands of ideation—a higher learning outcome—while working on the final project. This was compounded by the inherent challenge of integrating creative ideas within complex spatial parameters of a real site and communicating these ideas effectively to stakeholders. End-of-semester time constraints further exacerbated these challenges for students. The course instructor evaluated the impact on these three interconnected problems encountered during ideation, by enabling students to automate the process of visualisation using GenAI – Microsoft CoPilot.

 

METHOD

The impact of integrating GenAI was evaluated using three types of data – a) the course instructor’s observations of student engagement with ideating project solutions using GenAI, b) analysis of students’ visualisations for the project using GenAI, and c) a student perception survey about using GenAI. An exploratory case study method was adopted for data collection and evaluation, due to the fast-evolving context-specific nature of GenAI capabilities.

 

KEY FINDINGS

Overall, findings from the study demonstrated the amelioration of the three interconnected problems encountered by students. Firstly, GenAI helped integrate students’ ideas within the complex spatial parameters of any real-world site by drawing on its vast database of site-specific photographs. Secondly, GenAI produced realistic three-dimensional visualisations that enhanced effective communication of students’ creative ideas to external partners and stakeholders. Lastly, automating the visualisations freed students’ time to focus instead on the higher cognitive demand of generating creative ideas for the project and iterative refinements.

 

The course instructor’s observational data indicated an increase in positive student engagement during project discussions and consultations; compared to previous cohorts, students experimented more with complex creative ideas, provided meaningful peer feedback, and undertook effective improvements of their projects to incorporate peer and instructor feedback. During the formal presentation, the use of GenAI also enabled students to fully explain their creative ideas and engage stakeholders in discussions about implementation, a limitation faced by previous cohorts.

 

Students’ use of GenAI for the project demonstrated their ability to undertake the cognitively-demanding task of synthesising creative ideas anchored by robust interdisciplinary analysis. This was evidenced in the use of GenAI to scale the spaces correctly and connect site-specific details about materials, landscape, biodiversity, stakeholder priorities, and function. In some exemplary projects, students used GenAI to further elaborate spatial features and cited relevant literature justifying their ideas for implementation.

 

The student perception survey conducted at the end of the course included questions about the impact of using GenAI on the three challenges identified by previous cohorts, using a Likert scale. Students strongly agreed about the interconnected benefits of using GenAI for enabling the cognitively demanding task of ideation by automating the process of visualisation and iterative refinement, with scores for the six questions ranging from 73%-79%.

 

While it is difficult to establish causation, data from NUS student feedback also showed minor improvements in students’ expected grades and course difficulty levels with the use of GenAI. Similar improvements were noted for ‘teacher’s ability to enhance interest in the subject’ and ‘overall effectiveness’. The addition of a new AI-related question in the NUS Student Feedback Survey in AY2024/25 offers an opportunity to clarify this further.

 

Despite the learning affordances of using GenAI identified by students, survey data about their recommendation for its use by future cohorts showed mixed results, with only 56% supporting it. 24% decided against using GenAI due to a perceived steep learning curve. 21% were unsure due to their own struggles with using GenAI, as they discovered that prompt engineering was not an intuitive skill. Hence, the study concluded that decisions about the continued integrative use of GenAI in this course (and perhaps others) must also address such valid concerns and avoid creating new digital disparities in student learning (NUS CTLT, 2024).

 

REFERENCES

CU Committee Report: Generative Artificial Intelligence for Education and Pedagogy | Center for Teaching Innovation. (n.d.). Retrieved December 14, 2023, from https://teaching.cornell.edu/generative-artificial-intelligence/cu-committee-report-generative-artificial-intelligence-education

Eapen, T. T., Finkenstadt, D. J., Folk, J., & Venkataswamy, L. (2023, July 1). How generative AI can augment human creativity. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2023/07/how-generative-ai-can-augment-human-creativity.

Gregersen, H., & Bianzino, N. M. (2023, May 26). AI can help you ask better questions-and solve bigger problems. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2023/05/ai-can-help-you-ask-better-questions-and-solve-bigger-problems

Jensen, T., Dede, C., Tsiwah, F., & Thompson, K. (2023, July 27). Who Does the Thinking: The Role of Generative AI in Higher Education [Video]. YouTube. International Association of Universities. Retrieved December 12, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE_GKsdTPAs.

Kirschner, P. A., Hendrick, C., & Heal, J. (2022). How Teaching Happens: Seminal Works in Teaching and Teacher Effectiveness and What They Mean in Practice. Routledge.

Mollick, E. (2024). Co-intelligence: Living and working with AI. Portfolio/Penguin.

Mollick, E.R., and Mollick, L., (December 13, 2022). New Modes of Learning Enabled by AI Chatbots: Three Methods and Assignments. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4300783 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4300783

NUS CTLT (2024, August 7). Policy for Use of AI in Teaching and Learning. Retrieved August 25, 2024, from https://ctlt.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Policy-for-Use-of-AI-in-Teaching-and-Learning

Ross, J. (2023). Digital Futures for Learning: Speculative Methods and Pedagogies. Routledge.

 

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