Measuring the impact of an interdisciplinary experiential-learning activity on student learning

Abstract

An English professor and a chemistry professor from different academic departments collaborated to broaden engineering students' learning experience in two different engineering elective courses by bringing their students together for an interdisciplinary, experiential-learning activity. Educational pedagogy reports the value of incorporating experiential learning opportunities into course work to greater impact student learning [1], [2]. The courses involved were a humanities elective on science fiction and a science elective on nanotechnology. The crossover activity was built on a common theme, the societal impacts of new technologies, in each course. It involved the students presenting content from their course's discipline to students in the other course in a face-to-face event. The authors reported previously on how these courses were integrated [3]. The effects of the crossover activity on students' experiences were measured by evaluating learning outcomes in each class and by employing course surveys over a two-year period. The experimental group's scores on each of the course outcomes, as measured by exam questions, were compared to the control group's scores on each of the course outcomes while controlling for pre-test scores. Similarly, pre- and post-survey questions for the experimental group were compared to the control group's responses. Presented data will relate to the evaluation of the hypothesis that students' mastery of learning outcomes would be greater for those students participating in the integrated coursework as compared to the control group. Included is an evolution of the collaboration and the development of the crossover activity from an asychronistic reading and writing assignment to an interactive, experiential-learning activity. The challenges related to collaborating across departments and associated with measuring student learning will be discussed as well as planned future work in this collaboration.