A Framework for Analyzing Interdisciplinary Tasks: Implications for Student Learning and Curricular Design
Open Access
- 1 June 2013
- journal article
- Published by American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) in CBE—Life Sciences Education
- Vol. 12 (2), 187-205
- https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.12-08-0135
Abstract
The national conversation around undergraduate science instruction is calling for increased interdisciplinarity. As these calls increase, there is a need to consider the learning objectives of interdisciplinary science courses and how to design curricula to support those objectives. We present a framework that can help support interdisciplinary design research. We developed this framework in an introductory physics for life sciences majors (IPLS) course for which we designed a series of interdisciplinary tasks that bridge physics and biology. We illustrate how this framework can be used to describe the variation in the nature and degree of interdisciplinary interaction in tasks, to aid in redesigning tasks to better align with interdisciplinary learning objectives, and finally, to articulate design conjectures that posit how different characteristics of these tasks might support or impede interdisciplinary learning objectives. This framework will be useful for both curriculum designers and education researchers seeking to understand, in more concrete terms, what interdisciplinary learning means and how integrated science curricula can be designed to support interdisciplinary learning objectives.Keywords
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