The student projects have:
- Mobilized student engagement and activity
- Provided opportunities for students to make use of their own competence in creating valuable contributions to the center's future planning
- Equipped the participating students with valuable competence and experience
Projects in 2023
In the summer of 2023, INTED employed students to work on various projects. The objective was for students to collaborate in exploring interdisciplinary topics and to generate reports that INTED can use for future center activities. The project resulted in three separate reports written by students, each covering a different theme:
- Review of the research literature on interdisciplinary education
- Workshop methods for interdisciplinary learning
- Mapping of interdisciplinary activity at UiO
Research on interdisciplinary education
The focus of the first report was to conduct a literature review on interdisciplinary education. It examines the literature on the use of interdisciplinary activities, as well as frameworks for assessing the interdisciplinary nature of courses and interdisciplinary competence in students.
Through these objectives, the report also provides insights into different approaches to and reflections on interdisciplinary education. The report highlights areas of concern in the research literature on interdisciplinary education, as well as potential hinders when carrying out interdisciplinary activities.
Teaching methods
The second report assessed different methods for conducting workshops and activities with interdisciplinary groups within a limited time frame. The report aims to provide an overview of methods that effectively promote interdisciplinary skills in students, drawing from research on these methods. This knowledge is useful in designing interdisciplinary activities when facing time constraints, for instance when one does not have the time span of a full course.
Interdisciplinary activity at UiO
The third report mapped interdisciplinary activity at UiO across bachelor’s and master’s programs, both at the program and course level. It assesses programs and courses categorized by faculties, listing relevant programs and courses, and discusses how interdisciplinarity is practiced in comparison to our definition thereof. The report serves as a valuable resource for gaining a comprehensive overview of all forms of interdisciplinary teaching at the university.
The reports were developed on behalf of INTED and can be used in the further development of center activities.
Projects in 2024
During the summer of 2024, INTED students undertook summer projects focused on various interdisciplinary topics. These projects were predominantly student-driven and led by two of INTED's student leaders. The student leaders also served as contact persons for the other student projects, providing guidance to the groups throughout the summer.
The outcome was three reports on different interdisciplinary topics:
- One group researched various models for honours-courses in the United States, offering an analysis of the different structures, pedagogies, and principles.
- The second group built upon the work of a previous student project from the prior summer, establishing a baseline for interdisciplinary education at UiO. They examined the learning outcomes of courses designed to be interdisciplinary to understand their interpretation of interdisciplinarity and how it was taught in the courses.
- The third group produced a report on interdisciplinary exam formats, evaluating which exam format is best suited to assess interdisciplinary competence.
Four student groups addressed the use of text embedding in various contexts:
- One group addressed the use of text embeddings to address the semantic structure of texts, which may be an important tool to understand student thinking through their writing.
- Two groups addressed the use of text embeddings to describe survey data, with particular focus on how to discern and code student responses.
- One group addressed the use of text embeddings as predictive tools to address companies’ sustainability strategies and how they relate to their sustainability scores on e.g. an ESG rating.