We can also think of breaking a larger whole into its parts in order to understand the whole more fully, and this is called “systems thinking.”
I think this is a way for understanding IDS because we must understand our individual disciplines in order to collaborate.
“Interdisciplinarity” is more like a fruit smoothie, where the disciplines are blended together–integrated– to create something new.
I think this is an awesome metaphor as it describes truly how interdisciplinarity works. Creating something new is very important and part of the reason IDS is such a special program.
In some ways, epistemology explains the why of a discipline: why it focuses on certain content and why it chooses the methods that it choose
Epistemology is a word that I was unfamiliar with, but I think is so important to how we approach our IDS lives.
Third, there is the novelty of the mixture itself. In Western societies now, for instance, mixing bananas, apples, and grapes is not as creative, and unusual, as the mixing of guavas, kiwis, and blueberries.
I think this is one of the most interesting metaphors amongst the articles. This metaphor is what makes IDS so interesting that we have those unusual mixtures to make something new and exciting.
a place where people can engage with their ideas, participate with them in their learning) in their first semester in the program, and then come back to them to publish their capstone articles and projects. But the idea here is that in between, they have a space that lives with them where they can integrate the knowledge they are gathering from across their courses, and apply it to their own interests and experiences.
What is so unique about this is that there is no rubric. We are encouraged to make an ePort that expresses who we are and something that represents our future goals. I wish I had my ePort my first semester here at Plymouth, but sadly, I joined IDS late in my career and will only have three semesters to expand my ePort.
Students are introduced early on to the concept of the Personal Learning Network (or PLN), and asked to develop a plan for building a network of their own.
In college everyone talks about networking, networking, networking. But, most people A. don't do anything to network and/or B. don't know how to get started networking. Here in IDS, Robin helps us create our PLN and we are consistently thinking of new ways to stay involved in our IDS community and field of interest. We are taught in #PlymouthIDS how to expand our knowledge not only in the classroom, but in the real world. This helps us to understand we don't have to have all our knowledge in our own brains, but also within our network. We can rely on other sources, organizations, and people to help us develop as a scholar.
students get the “green light” when they meet the requirements.
One of my favorite parts of this course is logging onto the google sheets and seeing my assignment highlighted green. I feel like I just won a gold medal or something, like I actually accomplished a goal. And although this idea may sound silly its the same feeling a first grader probably gets when they get a gold star on their homework.
written by undergraduates in our own program. Our course materials are now completely free, so that’s awesome.
This textbook has been the most beneficial in my entire college career. First, not paying for the text is awesome, but the fact that a free textbook is so beneficial is mind blowing. It is great to read articles written by experts in the field as well as current/former students of the program. These students know exactly what we are going through and we as current students are able to hear their success stories.
Similarly, we offer a child-care co-op program that lets students volunteer to babysit for their classmates’ children when there are childcare emergencies. We also offer a transportation co-op that works much the same way, where we use a text-messaging app to help students request rides from other students if their normal transportation fails for some reason, and we stock gas cards in our office as well
Signing up for these lists was one of the first things we did in #IDSintro. I thought this was a unique idea and showed our strength as a community. Having strength can sometimes be hard, because we are not all in class together like a traditional major moving through the courses as one. We are rather on our own paths bound by the idea that we are creating our own education even if it is a different one.
Follow our class hashtag at #IDSintro
At first I thought this idea was weird, having class discussions through a hashtag and tweeting out my ePort posts. But, doing different activities in class where we discuss issues and respond using twitter is one of the coolest ways to learn. We are able to see the discussion happening first hand and truly dive into each other's thoughts. This is also a great way to see what our classmates are working on throughout the week!
many students do not get their programs accepted by the Interdisciplinary Studies Council
I think having a council that carefully looks over your application is one of the best things about this program. We have a group of faculty collaborating together and/or taking an interdisciplinary approach to decision making. This group of faculty work together to make a decision with our best interest in mind. Although my program was approved on my first try, I can honestly say that I met with one of the council members as well as knew that they wanted the best for my future and would not approve my contract without careful consideration.
Most Physical and Occupational Therapy students currently build programs through #PlymouthIDS, as do Pre-Med students
I was an Exercise and Sport Physiology major before I was an IDS major. Although this major can also help students achieve their goals of attending OT or PT school post-graduation, IDS allowed me to create a unique program that focuses strictly on my end goal. I want to be an OT and some of the classes I was going to take as an Exercise and Sport Physiology major were not relevant to my field of interest, but that is when I found IDS and was able to create my own program and take ownership of my education.
Open Pedagogy approach to the curriculum, and since then, we’ve grown in enrollments by 1,150%.
I think part of this increase in enrollment is the passionate faculty we have here at Plymouth State. Robin DeRosa has done an amazing job not only building connections with students, but building connections with other faculty members to promote this type of learning. Having faculty that is passionate and engaged makes students like myself more motivated and excited to learn.
this study has me standing alone and in this case, that isn’t a bad thing.
Taking control of your own education and seeing that it is okay to stand alone is often the first step we must take as IDS students before joining the program.
feel trapped or to feel stuck in this routine
I think this is the most common theme of traditional educational programs.
In today’s world one of the top aspects an employer will look for when hiring an individual, is creativity.
We are in a world in which we need to be creative in order to best market ourselves to employers.
Flights are one of the most multidisciplinary businesses on the planet.
Our world is constantly changing and every business I believe is becoming more and more multidisciplinary.
Overall, it takes many different disciplines in order to successfully fly a group of people around the world. As customers, do not put much thought into how, or why everything works, we are only concerned with getting to our final destinations. Hopefully this does not make your next trip to the airport even more overwhelming than it ordinarily would be.
Thinking about every day ideas that suddenly increase in depth when breaking apart the large concept.
There is a medical aspect integrated, which discusses the health science and services for the children. There is also the discipline of law integrated as well. The law aspect covers the state-made laws creates by the courts in both Western Europe and North America.
This is just one example of how multiple disciplines can form together to solve one problem.
There are problems within individual disciplines; divisions between childhood education, legal and social service providers and social science and humanities researchers; as well as divisions within the medical sciences, social sciences and the humanities in their examination of medical ethics for childhood.”
This reminds me of the saying "it takes a village to raise a child"; it takes multiple disciplines to solve a problem.
By integrating these fields within the interdisciplinary studies, the information has become more advanced and any missing gaps of information have started to closed in due to the overlap of information
Overlapping the information will allow gaps to be filled and for greater understanding of suject matter.
students who study interdisciplinarity are more likely to develop: affective cognitive skills; reading, writing, speaking, and thinking skills; higher curiosity for learning; more creativity and originality in thought processes; and an ability to integrate traditional ideas with current ideas.
We are taking the challenge by choice in order to better ourselves. IDS students are deeply rooted in the idea of creating and taking initiative of your own future. Therefore will develop skills and gain knowledge because we want to not because we have to.
Departments are made of people working towards the same goal, taking similar classes, and exchanging similar ideas. Interdisciplinary students are removed from the “common core” experience of education, creating a personalized layout instead.
I think we often forget the different backgrounds within disciplines and departments. This is important to remember as we look forward for advising and careers.
Specialized education was in high demand, changing the structure of many colleges and universities across the United States of America and the world. Around this time, disciplines were divided into sub-disciplines, like chemistry an
We see change within the cluster model, but as we look back, higher ed has always been changing.
As noted in the previous chapter, employers like employees who know what they want, are confident in their decisions, think independently, know their strengths and weaknesses, and are curious about life.
As IDS students, we are our own advisors and have a lot of choice in classes and other aspects of our academics. Without IDS we would not learn these life skills in this setting.
: interdisciplinary students create a plan that combines all their interests into a single, personalized major. Students who follow this format learn more about themselves and what they want from their educational experience than students who passively accept a predetermined curriculum based on a single field of study.
Taking ownership of your goals and who you are is essential in creating the best IDS experience possible.
Education is not a simulation preparing students for an imaginary destination. Students arrived at the destination when they opened their eyes for the first time, took their first step, tried their first carrot, and looked up at the sky for the first time, wondering, “why is the sky blue?”
We must have hands on and practical education in order to achieve our goals. We cannot walk through the motions, but rather take the steps one at a time to achieve greatness.
Interdisciplinary studies allows students to experiment and ask questions. It encourages them to follow their hearts and enjoy their undergraduate experiences.
I feel like as an undergraduate we often trudge through our degrees just trying to get past the general education requirements. But here in IDS we can put a value to each course and truly fulfill our desires in our own education.
The first barrier facing interdisciplinary students is attitude. An attitudinal barrier is any behavior or perception that prevents students or employees from effectively communicating. In the case of interdisciplinary studies, an attitudinal barrier would be a scholar or researcher who has no interest in collaborating with other disciplines or people.
I think this barrier is very relatable when it comes to having all advisors agree on a contract. There can be a barrier in communication between advisors as well as understanding in the students want and how to please all parties.
10,000 hours.
I think this is an insane number and shows how much time and dedication goes into mastering any area of study.
The most interesting part to me about social communities within disciplines is that “faculty members share common formative experiences…and appreciate a common canon of writings by the ‘founding fathers’ of the disciplines” (Repko 90).
I believe understanding one's roots of their discipline is essential in understanding the subject as a whole and why some things might be the way they are.
It never really came to mind that teachers of the same subject were together during the school day simply to discuss developments in their field; I just thought it worked out that they were friends. Looking back, it makes so much more sense that they were able to make lesson plans based off each other’s knowledge and experience.
This is kind of like our IDS class as we join together to tackle and discuss a variety of topics.
Considering this, I already know that nutrition, age, and mental state all contribute to the health of one’s skin, and I would love to be able to study these interactions with other specialists outside my discipline one day
It is great to see an enhanced understanding of the connections between disciplines with push to answer one questions or tackle one issue.
Our society is only starting to get the ball rolling on interdisciplinary communication.
I think IDS students like us will be the ones to continue that growth with regards to IDS communication.
Today, technology permeates our daily lives, drives our economy, and delivers our higher education. More and more disciplines in the twenty-first century are built to teach about technology, with technology.
Technology is a great way to enhance one's experience and provide a different way to educate students.
The disciplines that we know today started as scholars specializing in that field of interest then continuing to share their knowledge with others. The scholars who have specialized in particular topics would collaborate together to determine definitions for the field of study in order to create the disciplines. As knowledge along with communities grew, the need for professions grew as well, and these communities and professions carved out the academic disciplines.
In some ways we are much like these scholars carving a new path in our education with new opportunities. But, rather than pulling apart from and becoming our own discipline we are combining with other disciplines to carve our future endeavours.
Surprisingly, distance learning has been around since the early 1700’s and went by the name “correspondence courses.” Students who took these courses were sent pamphlets and textbooks through the United States Postal Service.
I think it is amazing that distance learning was available to students even before the internet was widely available.
The University of Al-Karaouine in Morocco, Africa is the oldest continuously operating, degree-granting university in the world.
I would not have guessed that the oldest university was in Africa. I would have guessed England, but it was cool to learn about this!
Disciplinary researchers seem capable of filling productive, yet unoccupied, niches, so that the opportunities for fruitful research in the gray areas among the disciplines are perhaps not missed for long.
There is so much yet to learn and those not afraid of gray areas are able to tackle issues others fear.
Many complex or practical problems can only be understood by pulling together insights and methodologies from a variety of disciplines.
Understanding the world's problems is not one dimensional and neither is the process of solving them.
Be that as it may, in personal terms, individual scholars eager to migrate an obvious personal reward of the willingness to cross disciplinary boundaries.
Being able to work in a multitude of different research fields can lead to one's expansion of knowledge as well as the world's ability to understand more.
Owing to the disciplinary fragmentation of the world of learning, academics fail to notice those larger threats to academic freedom which affect the academic community as a whole.
Having the freedom and feeling in control of my own future is one of the many perks of being an IDS student.
The act of creation may also arise from the permutation of ideas from two or more disciplines.
The world is full of issues and using knowledge from many different areas we can solve new problems!
Interdisciplinarity is best seen as bringing together distinctive components of two or more disciplines.
I think the word distincitve is the best word to incorporate into the definition of interdisciplinarity as we attempt to incorporate so many different aspects.
In some ways, epistemology explains the why of a discipline: why it focuses on certain content and why it chooses the methods that it chooses.
Focusing on the why of OT is understanding WHY certain things happen physically and what is the relation to the brain. For example, how does the brain influence the body's movements and what other roles can mental health play in the the body's ability to rehabilitate.
An epistemology is a worldview, ideology, or approach to truth and knowledge.
Using epistemology we can approach one's degree with an open mind and prepare students for a future in which they are able to think critically and openly about the world and its issues.
Second, there are the methods of the discipline. Methods are the way that we study the content of a discipline.
To me, IDS is a method of studying what I want to pursue in life, Occupational Therapy. I think it is important to have a method in which I can break down all aspects of OT and incorporate them into my program.
ometimes we actually don’t want to carve a problem or concept into small bits, but instead want to see how something specific fits into a larger pattern or fabric.
Once we break down an issue/goal it is important to be able to put all pieces back together to form a larger picture.
We can also think of breaking a larger whole into its parts in order to understand the whole more fully, and this is called “systems thinking.” Both are very useful for
IDS breaks down a field of interest and helps one to understand every aspect of that goal.
In a similar manner, at any given historical point, the interdisciplinary richness of any two exemplars of knowledge, research, and education can be compared by weighing four variables: the number of disciplines involved, the “distance” between them, the novelty and creativity involved in combining the disciplinary elements, and their degree of integration.
I think the distance between the disciplines is the biggest variable in comparing IDS programs to one another.
mixing bananas, apples, and grapes is not as creative, and unusual, as the mixing of guavas, kiwis, and blueberries.
Mixing certain things together may be odd, but it will work together in a new creative way. Much like a new mixture of fruit each IDS program can be a new unique mixture.
Incorporates several fields of study to allow collaboration among diverse disciplines to either specify or broaden students’ education, to gain understanding, and/or to problem solve.
I love this class because each student has the opportunity to create a unique program just for them. I think as much as our programs are interdisciplinarity so are the students that make up our class and the knowledge we all can bring to different discussions.
This is when you use interdisciplinarity to question the very structure of knowledge, to critique the way that education and research are carved up into silos, or to question the way that disciplines organize the world around us.
I feel like a lot of this class is based off the idea of critical interdisciplinarity and understanding the many aspects that make up open education. We can use Intro to IDS to better research waht we want to pursue in life and waht classes will best help us for the future.
“multidisciplinarity” is like a fruit bowl, where different disciplines are represented by the different fruits that are placed together in a bowl but which do not mix much or change shape themselves. Interdisciplinarity (Photo CCBYNCND Anna Wyrwol) “Interdisciplinarity” is more like a fruit smoothie, where the disciplines are blended together–integrated– to create something new.
I never really understand the true difference between these terms, but this metaphor is a perfect explanation in the differences between the two.
connections between all fields that intersect and overlap — economics and sociology, law and psychology, business and history, physics and medicine, anthropology and political science.
As we go out to obtain real life jobs the more comprehensive knowledge will increases our chances at not only getting a job, but performing optimally in the real world.
Understanding the nature of knowledge, its unity, its varieties, its limitations, and its uses and abuses is necessary for the success of our democracy.
Understanding the relationship and unity amongst other departments on campus is essential in building a comprehensive IDS program.
But a major failure of our higher-education system is that it has largely come to serve as a job-readiness program. Instead of helping students learn and grow as individuals, find meaning in their lives, or understand their role in society, college has become a chaotic maze where students try to pick up something useful as they search for the exit: the degree needed to obtain decent employment.
I think this is a huge discussion topic considering IDS has created a platform for me to be able to take specialized courses in pursuit of a degree.
Domains’ is radical not because it is a technological shift, but because it encourages a pedagogical shift. The domains project isn’t revolutionary to the traditional classroom, but it is revolutionary to a classroom reimagined around public scholarship, student agency and experimentation.
As our world changes we must learn to adapt. Part of adapting in today's society is embracing technology to help create a more interesting and enriching classroom experience.
The web is a network for conversations, and if students still see their audience as a teacher with a red pen, then nothing changes.
Having the freedom to express yourself without the fear of being graded or the pressure to impress one professor is one of the key reasons to use technology as a form of learning.
I want to shift the emphasis from data possession to knowledge production.
We are producing our future right in our hands rather than relying on others to do it for us.
Students with this kind of digital fluency will be well-prepared for creative and responsible leadership in the post-Gutenberg age
Leadership can come in many different forms and I think the younger generation can be a leader in technology moving forward.
n building that personal cyberinfrastructure, students not only would acquire crucial technical skills for their digital lives but also would engage in work that provides richly teachable moments ranging from multimodal writing to information science, knowledge management, bibliographic instruction, and social networking. Fascinating and important innovations would emerge as students are able to shape their own cognition, learning, expression, and reflection in a digital age, in a digital medium.
Again this drives the idea behind creating your own progress and taking control of your future. I believe technology can be used to fuel the future in a positive way by allowing students to use expression and creativity online.
Higher education, which should be in the business of thinking the unthinkable
I think this idea is the driving force behind PSUs cluster model as well as our unique IDS program.
The importance of giving students responsibility for their own domain cannot be overstated. This can be a way to track growth and demonstrate new learning over the course of a student’s school career
I think it is important to recognize how technology can help one grow and learn.
At the simplest level, a Domain of One’s Own helps students build their own digital portfolio. They can be used in a classroom setting in order for students to demonstrate their learning.
With today's technology young adults often use technology to communicate with one another and older generations look down upon the use of technology. However, I think this is a great point and proves how technology can be used to further one's career.
It is, after all, their education, their intellectual development, their work.
I think this line in the text is especially important in IDS. IDS is built upon the idea that students are involved in their education and have control of their learning.