Promoting Interdisciplinary Learning (Online)

At the University of Toronto, our classrooms are made up of students from a wide range of programs and disciplines. Electives/open courses, in particular, can bring students together from diverse disciplines, leading to important questions about promoting and nurturing interdisciplinarity in our classrooms. In other words: How might we develop teaching strategies to promote interdisciplinary learning in these classrooms, without sacrificing the disciplinary specificity of our own programs/departments/fields? How might we design assessments for students that allow them to work from and through their own disciplinary interests, while carrying out course goals? How can we ensure that every student’s disciplinary knowledge feels valued in the classroom? The topics we’ll address throughout this workshop include: The Importance of Interdisciplinarity: Working from Uneven Foundations; Promoting Interdisciplinary Learning; and Designing Assessments for Interdisciplinarity.