Abstract
This paper discusses blended support for undergraduate students to perform
interdisciplinary research in teams. Interdisciplinary research is a complex
process that consists of multiple steps and requires collaboration with people
from different backgrounds. This paper presents research done at Liberal
Arts and Sciences, Utrecht University (LAS), where students learn to do
interdisciplinary research as part of the core curriculum. Considering the
complexity of doing interdisciplinary research, it is important that students
are guided in this process. Blended support that combines technologymediated guidance and face-to-face meetings would be of use to help
students become more independent interdisciplinary researchers. This paper
explores preferences in blended support, based on a survey and interviews
with second and third year students and with undergraduate research
supervisors at LAS, UU. Results indicated that there are different activities
during the interdisciplinary research process where technology-mediated
support would be of value. However, students and supervisors especially
value meeting face-to-face when doing interdisciplinary integration. This
should be taken into account when designing a blended framework for
support of undergraduate interdisciplinary research.
interdisciplinary research in teams. Interdisciplinary research is a complex
process that consists of multiple steps and requires collaboration with people
from different backgrounds. This paper presents research done at Liberal
Arts and Sciences, Utrecht University (LAS), where students learn to do
interdisciplinary research as part of the core curriculum. Considering the
complexity of doing interdisciplinary research, it is important that students
are guided in this process. Blended support that combines technologymediated guidance and face-to-face meetings would be of use to help
students become more independent interdisciplinary researchers. This paper
explores preferences in blended support, based on a survey and interviews
with second and third year students and with undergraduate research
supervisors at LAS, UU. Results indicated that there are different activities
during the interdisciplinary research process where technology-mediated
support would be of value. However, students and supervisors especially
value meeting face-to-face when doing interdisciplinary integration. This
should be taken into account when designing a blended framework for
support of undergraduate interdisciplinary research.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd’20) Universitat Politecnica de Valencia |
| Pages | 437-445 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2020 |
Keywords
- Interdisciplinary education
- undergraduate research
- blendedlearning
- educational technology