Assessing the impact of an interdisciplinary first-year Experience program

Abstract

This research paper builds upon an ongoing exploration of a large-scale, interdisciplinary course integration for first-year Technology majors. Our research begins to show that the program is making measurable differences to students' learning, engagement, and sense of community. Administrators and instructors from 2 colleges within the university collaborated to organize and teach paired sections of Technology, English, and Communication courses. All 3 classroom instructors in each set of sections work together within the Integrated First-Year Experience, which ultimately aims to tie essential skills and concepts from the humanities and STEM fields to realistic global problems and contexts. The program was implemented for more than 500 first-year students in each academic year (2015-16 and 2016-17). Our research responds to questions about the potential for integrated courses to improve students' conceptual learning and engagement with the university, and about the most effective ways for instructors and administrators to plan, support, and implement this kind of integration. We demonstrate the potential for interdisciplinary pedagogy generally and STEM-Humanities integration in particular to improve students' perceived learning transfer and sense of academic engagement.