Purpose: Extant literature tends to consider knowledge boundaries as a necessary property of interdisciplinary work. Knowledge boundaries are, thus, reified and treated as something to be traversed, transcended or otherwise negotiated. There is, however, very little work that closely examines the process of emergence of boundaries. The purpose of…

This article aims to expand our knowledge on interdisciplinary design education by focusing on team development, which has remained a less explored aspect of interdisciplinary collaboration so far. An interdisciplinary design studio course, Collaborative Design, for food engineering and industrial design students in higher education provides the…

The design of biological systems is a multidisciplinary activity in which biomedical engineers collaborate to build novel biological systems that address society's needs. One of the most relevant skills for designing biological systems is engineering systems thinking (EST). Among the EST elements, the EST cognitive competencies are comparatively…

This article aims to present our experience with transmedia storytelling in the design of materials selection, integrating two disciplines within an undergraduate mechanical engineering curriculum in Brazil. The students' project involved developing a narrative within the fictional universe of superheroes while exploring material properties using…

Contribution: This study provides evidence for the benefit of short online courses for the transdisciplinary competence development of graduate students. It shows the significant challenges students face while learning, and provides instructional recommendations to improve students' learning quality and professionalism. Background: Developing…

The prevailing civil engineering graduates' technical writing and oral presentation-related drawbacks have necessitated the design and implementation of demand-driven courses applying interdisciplinary pedagogy. This study investigates civil engineering academia-industry interdisciplinary contents, methods, and situations needed to design…

Since the beginning of the 21st century, design education has been gaining momentum across disciplines as a means to equip students with skills relevant in the job market as well as to tackle wicked problems. One of the core assumptions behind integrating design education to other disciplines focuses on the need for hands-on and experiential…

Contribution: While design project courses offer first-year students a practical introduction to engineering, a portion of class time is usually spent on lecturing foundational knowledge instead of practicing engineering design. This article presents a blended design-based learning (bDBL) approach that makes class time more efficient and explores…

This article describes an interdisciplinary, partially online honors course entitled Video Game Theory and Design. The article reviews the literature surrounding video games and technical communication and then outlines the learning objectives for the course. The authors describe individual and team-produced assignments and suggest game design…

Problem-based learning is one of the most useful resources in education with the potential to effect real world change. The evident benefits of PBL in the face of the challenges that Latin America presently encounters have led many institutions to consider the adoption of PBL curricula. However, PBL implementation has its own set of difficulties.…

The gap between industry needs and engineering graduates' competences is being tackled by project-based courses, which also help to develop key innovation competences to address current societal challenges. Nevertheless, there is limited understanding about what innovation competences are developed through the different types of project-based…

To build a sustainable future, science and engineering education programmes should emphasise scientific investigation, collaboration across traditional science topics and disciplines, and engineering design, including design and evaluation of solutions. While some research studies articulate the shifts that are needed to realise classroom learning…

This study examines the effects of a design thinking intervention on first-year students' teamwork skills from a multi-actor perspective. A design thinking course was evaluated throughout a semester. Six-hundred-and-forty university students participated, guided by twenty-six facilitators. The students received in-class training and worked in…

Design and design thinking are increasingly being taught across several disciplines--ranging from arts, architecture, and technology and engineering to business schools--where expertise plays a central role. A substantial corpus of literature on research in regard to design expert and design expertise has accumulated in the last decades. However,…

Biomimicry, the process of using nature to guide innovative thinking and development, can be useful in helping students grasp scientific concepts. Teachers interested in incorporating biomimicry into lesson plans might find that experiential learning at informal science institutions (ISIs) with natural models and artifacts is a valuable tool to…