Never neglect yourself, even if you think you’re being selfish.

The fact that the web functions the way it does is illustrative of the tremendously powerful economic forces that structure it.

The web is fraught with recommender engines and analytics. Colleges and universities buy information on prospective students, and institutions profile students through social media accounts.7 Prospective employers do the same. When students find out about microtargeting, social media "filter bubbles," surveillance capitalism, facial recognition, and black-box algorithms making decisions about their future—and learn that because so much targeting is based on economics and race, it will disproportionately affect them—their concept of what the web is changes.

When faculty use OERs, we aren’t just saving a student money on textbooks: we are directly impacting that student’s ability to enroll in, persist through, and successfully complete a course.

According to U.S. PIRG,2 college textbook prices have increased at nearly four times the rate of inflation for all finished goods since 1994. College students spend an average of $900 per year on textbooks—26 percent of the cost of tuition at a public, four-year university.

Open educational resources allow the full technical power of the Internet to be brought to bear on education. OER allow exactly what the Internet enables: free sharing of educational resources with the world.

As important as it is for there to be highly specialized scholars in every discipline, it’s just as important to have interdisciplinary students building bridges between ideas, creating cohesive, universal collaboration.

If students are living their lives in preparation for life, when will they start living?

The relevancy of education is often overlooked by students, especially young students who have not yet graduated from high school.

If an applicant can’t work in a team, write a grant, or engage meaningfully with other people, he may be turned away from a job or his career may not flourish.

Increase Font Size Toggle Menu HomeReadSign in Search in book: Search Contents About This Book I. Architectures for Learning 1. The Web We Need to Give Students2. A Personal Cyberinfrastructure3. Do I Own My Domain if You Grade it?4. Tech and IDS: An IDS Student Reflects on Three Readings5. IDS Realizes $h!t Happens!: A Student Reflects on their IDS Experience II. Open Pedagogy and Connected Learning 6. Why Openness in Education?7. Open Pedagogy8. How Public? Why Public?9. What an Open Pedagogy Class Taught Me About Myself10. Assumptions and Challenges of Open Scholarship11. Excerpts from "Connected Learning: A Context for Interdisciplinarity"12. How to Find and Build a Scholarly Community13. A student reflects on Twitter and her academic experience: A Student's PLN14. Take A Day for Yourself: A Student's PLN15. The FDA, Marketing, & Nutritional Deficiencies: A Student's PLN16. The Humanitarian Gift: A student's PLN17. Empathy: A student's PLN III. Terms & Concepts 18. Colleges Should Reconstruct the Unity of Knowledge19. The BIG Terms20. FRUIT: A Metaphor for Understanding Interdisciplinarity21. Concepts for DOING Interdisciplinarity22. Content, Methods, Epistemologies23. Ten Cheers for Interdisciplinarity24. A Student Synopsis of "Ten Cheers for Interdisciplinarity" IV. Disciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity 25. The History of the Academy and the Disciplines26. Where We Begin27. Disciplines as Social Communities28. The Benefits and Challenges of Interdisciplinarity29. How do we DO interdisciplinarity?30. Concrete Challenges of Doing Interdisciplinary Work31. The World as We Know It, Has Changed V. Academics on Interdisciplinarity: Professors Talk with Students 32. Rachelle Lyons: Environmental Science33. Ann McClellan: English34. Laura Tilghman: Anthropology VI. Creating an Interdisciplinary Studies Major 35. Creating a Program in Women's Health36. Creating a Program in Global Health37. Creating a Program in Expressive Arts38. Coursework: An Example of Integration39. Standing Alone VII. Interdisciplinary Research 40. The Research Process41. Sample Prospectuses for Research Article & Applied Project (Sustainability Theme)42. Sample Prospectuses for Research Article & Applied Project (Sex Ed Theme)43. Sample Capstone Articles and Projects VIII. Interdisciplinarity: Scholarship & Application 44. The Interdisciplinarity of Flight45. Interdisciplinary Studies of Childhood Ethics Interdisciplinary Studies: A Connected Learning Approach 28 The Benefits and Challenges of Interdisciplinarity Janina MisiewiczVersion I Authors: Alison Abbott, Jeana DeBona, Mikaela Guertin, Lizzy Daly, Mariah Mann, Andrea Ellis, Annie Brewer Introduction Interdisciplinary studies, as a concept, would not be possible without the foundational structure of disciplinary studies. In order to break apart and reorganize a system, a preliminary system must already exist. In the case of education, the modern disciplines—science, art, social science, humanities, and applied science—are considered the prologue to interdisciplinarity. Without these pre-established academic fields, interdisciplinary studies would not be possible. Understanding the history of education is essential to understanding the current academic climate surrounding interdisciplinarity. A Controversial History Until the industrial revolution, education was dominated by religion and classical texts, exploring questions of morality and a higher truth, but with the advent of technology at the end of the nineteenth century, education was expected to prepare workers for the rapidly industrializing economy. 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 and anthropology, and many universities emphasized their disciplinary resources and research facilities. Knowledge transformed from an experience to a product. Not everyone, however, supported the shift towards specialization at the turn of the twentieth century. Charles Eliot, President of Harvard University during this educational transition, played a key role in the development of the “liberal arts education.” In many ways, Eliot’s radical views on education are still relevant today. For example, one of his most influential reforms was advocacy for a curriculum based on students’ interests rather than a pre-established curriculum. He believed that a student, by age eighteen, was old enough to select his own courses and pursue his own imagination (Zakaria 54-7).

Many people as students observe professors and teachers in high school and middle school as being a part of individual social groups, kind of like cliques.

Already we see much collaboration in medicine between researchers and doctors, but how much of it is multidisciplinary, rather than interdisciplinary as it should be?

Without the disciplines, interdisciplinarity would have nothing to build on, nothing to incorporate or weave together in order to find solutions to world problems.

knowledge exchanged was not labelled

Although it is a widely used concept, very few undergraduates can actually define what a “discipline” is.

In 1999 74 percent of full-time students worked while attending college, and nearly half of them worked at least 25 hours a week. Unfortunately, many of those student workers say that holding a job hurts their grades, as well as limits their choice of courses. By one estimate, college students typically spend less than half the time on their studies than the faculty expects.

Higher education must raise the important issues and guide students in synthesizing responses, if not answers. Failing to do so is a missed opportunity of staggering dimensions, for history shows that humanity has a craving for wholeness.

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.

Metacognition is the “awareness of your own learning and thinking process”

And that feels really good because unlike many other majors where it is easy to feel trapped or to feel stuck in this routine that everyone who has graduated with your degree has gone through- the same process; this study has me standing alone and in this case, that isn’t a bad thing.

I am creating and envisioning a possibility that others may not see or may not have the confidence to direct. That possibility is going to open so many doors for me.

So what should we be teaching? Many pedagogical experts argue that schools should switch to teaching “the four Cs” – critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity. More broadly, schools should downplay technical skills and emphasise general-purpose life skills. Most important of all will be the ability to deal with change, to learn new things and to preserve your mental balance in unfamiliar situations.

Instead, people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and above all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world.

By now, most of us no longer think it possible to become a Renaissance Scholar a la Leonardo da Vinci.

Even under the best circumstances, an interdisciplinarian is unlikely to gain as complete a mastery of her broad area as the specialists upon whose work her own endeavor is based.