The authors report the results of a cross-class project involving sophomore-level students in an Operations Analysis (OA) class with junior-level students in an Operations Management (OM) class. The students formed virtual teams and developed a simulation model of a call center. The OM students provided the management expertise, while the OA…

This article describes some of the findings of an evaluation of a "cross-curricular" digital media arts project for Year 8 students at Lister Community School in the London Borough of Newham. The project was designed to provide opportunities for a thematic curriculum in which quality learning encompassing both independent and collaborative…

With the new European framework, as EAP lecturers in an engineering college, we are reappraising our teaching and the position of our courses. From the perspective of engineering education in the 21st century, we believe that EAP teaching can focus not only on language and communication needs, but also on developing critical thinking about science…

Discussions on learning in organizations are characterized by the diversity of perspectives involved and the variety of their disciplinary roots. This is an effort to identify the roots of some metaphors employed in this literature. It is argued that cross-metaphor conversations can contribute to the richness of discussions in the field. Some…

In today's competitive college market, "interdisciplinary studies" are a major selling point for colleges and universities. Yet, on closer examination, it is apparent that the academic structure and place of the majority of interdisciplinary programs, departments, and centers are not substantially different from the academic disciplines,…

The demand for a new workforce to meet the challenges of a global knowledge economy is rapidly increasing. As a special report in Business Week magazine observed last year: "The game is changing. It isn't just about math and science anymore. It's about creativity, imagination, and, above all, innovation." Most analysts studying the new global…

This article describes a brand-new liberal-arts university which promises a different approach to teaching. Quest University is the first private, nonprofit, secular college in Canada. It has attracted professors with stellar credentials. Of its 79 freshmen, most are graduates of the rigorous International Baccalaureate high-school program, and…

This article reports on a study of senior academics' views of their disciplinary and interdisciplinary affiliations. It questions the idea that academics have a firm and fixed disciplinary identity from which they then act and suggests that academic work in the contemporary university challenges and changes how individuals view their disciplinary…

The interdisciplinary survey inherits from more traditional survey courses the weaknesses embodied in the survey textbook. The standard textbook presentation gives students the impression that each figure's music, art, or literature is the product of the "spirit of the age." Well-chosen biographies temper that presentation by drawing attention to…

One of the important themes that emerged from the CAL'07 conference was the failure of technology to bring about the expected disruptive effect to learning and teaching. We identify one of the causes as an inherent weakness in prevalent development methodologies. While the problem of designing technology for learning is irreducibly…

Given the increasing interest in musico-literary studies, I wish to examine some ways in which music can be used for pedagogical purposes in teaching literature. It has been widely recognized that music and poetry sprang from the common origin of chant or incantation. Throughout the ages, the sister arts sometimes went hand in hand and sometimes…

Literature and medicine is a discipline within medical humanities, which challenges medicine to reconfigure its scientific model to become interdisciplinary, and be disciplined by arts and humanities as well as science. The psychological, emotional, spiritual and physical are inextricably linked in people, inevitably entailing provisionality,…

This article is an outgrowth of the evaluation and assessment process in a large interdisciplinary studies (IDS) program at West Virginia University. We argue for the importance of collecting and assessing quantitative and qualitative data concerning learning outcomes, student satisfaction, career choice and development, and graduate education…

This paper addresses the lack of formalised methodology for analysing learner interaction data created in conversations on audiographic platforms. First the author shows the importance of conversations in language learning and the need for researchers to understand how users learn from these interactions. Then the author establishes that…

Patient care is complex and demands that health professionals work together effectively. Interprofessional education (IPE) encourages collaboration by educating students from different professions together. This study examined the effectiveness of IPE in terms of changing students' perceptions of teamwork, professional identity, role, competency…