Interdisciplinary in an increasingly popular term in educational settings. Analysis of the term reveals two meanings, a characteristic of an individual (i.e., interdisciplinary thinking) and a characteristic of a group (i.e., interdisciplinary collaborations). This paper serves to delineate those two meanings while building a conceptual model of…

Prior research indicates that empathy can help engineers achieve better outcomes in team-based, design, entrepreneurial, and humanitarian environments. We describe an educational innovation designed to teach engineering students empathic communication skills. Written in the spirit of a propagation (versus dissemination) paradigm, we focus on how…

Instructors face myriad competing demands for topical coverage in their courses, while navigating pressure to teach in varied modalities and meet employers' expectations for graduates. Starting from a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning framework, this article contributes to the bridging-the-gap literature by addressing local employers' needs and…

Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) skills are receiving increased attention in the current workforce and in lifelong learning. In learning and labor contexts, successful teamwork is however not always guaranteed, due to several reasons, such as an unequal level of individual participation. Training in CPS for all groups is therefore needed.…

Graduates of international business (IB) programs are facing a complex dynamic world in which they need both specific and generalist knowledge they can activate in socially negotiated situations. Their competencies must go beyond narrowly applying knowledge, which requires open minds, transferable social competencies, and skills for crossing…

STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) lessons have leaned heavily on the visual arts in interdisciplinary preservice learning. For preservice teachers, the application of STEAM pedagogies encourages complexity of thought connecting with their past and new experiences as well as greater self-awareness and risk-taking.…

Since 2012 an interdisciplinary and culturally heterogeneous team composed of more than 30 people has been engaged in the complex process of conceiving, designing and validating an online placement test with formative orientation called SELF (Système d'Evaluation en Langues à visée Formative), developed and already deployed in six different…

The purpose of this paper is to present a project that builds labor market skills employers are seeking through experiential classroom learning. The sales management training exercise described in this article provides students with an opportunity to think and act like sales managers by working together in teams to collaborate on a training…

Biology labs often make use of student teams. However, some students resist working in teams, often based on poor experiences. Although instructors sometimes struggle with student teams, effective teams in biology labs are achievable. We increased student learning and satisfaction when working in research teams by (1) including in the syllabus a…

This article discusses two multidisciplinary courses created at the Colorado School of Mines that were developed to integrate ethics into the first-year engineering curriculum: "Nature and Human Values" (NHV) and "Innovation and Discovery in Engineering, Arts, and Sciences" (IDEAS). In both NHV and IDEAS, our objectives are to…

The article presents and illustrates the learning journey (LJ)--a new management development approach to inter-organisational learning based on observation, reflection and problem-solving. The LJ involves managers from different organisations and applies key concepts of action learning and systemic organisational development. Made up of…

Even in a standards-based curriculum, teachers can apply constructivist practices such as structured learning teams. In this environment, students become invested in the learning aims, triggering the desire in students to awaken, get information, interpret, remix, share, and design scenarios.

The value of experiential learning is widely acknowledged, especially for the development of communication skills, but students are not always aware of their own learning. While we can observe students practicing targeted skills during the experiential activity, the experience can also color their explicit understanding of those skills. Transfer…

There is a wealth of research on computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) that is neglected in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) research. CSCW research is concerned with contextual factors, however, that may strongly influence collaborative learning processes as well, such as task characteristics, team formation, team members'…

This paper provides a concept and a notation for optimizing the design of social processes in gaming and learning for individuals, groups of individuals and society as a whole. Traditional approaches to the mapping and designing of the emerging social dynamics in a joyful, social education setting have fallen short of producing desirable results…