About the Project

In 2018, the University of Warwick launched its institutional strategy, ‘Excellence with Purpose’ with interdisciplinarity viewed as essential to meet the grand challenges of 21st-century society. The Interdisciplinary Learning Circle (WIHEA-ILC) in 2018 led a project reviewing interdisciplinary teaching and learning based on ITLR 2017 data. This WIHEA ILC Project proposes to review the findings of ITLR 2023 in order to longitudinally map progress from 2017, as well as creating an interdisciplinary network (IN) and re-launching the Interdisciplinary Student Hub (IHS), a website with examples of good interdisciplinary practice.

Project Aims

The project proposed to undertake a review of progress made with the University’s Education Strategy relating to interdisciplinary teaching and learning through:

• A longitudinal study of interdisciplinary teaching and learning using data from departmental submissions to the ITLR 2017 and the ITLR 2023; which will highlight the areas the University has made progress on and other areas where there is still an identifiable gap from 2017 to 2023.
• Undertaking qualitative interviews with departments to gain further information on their current approach to interdisciplinary teaching.
• Undertaking qualitative interviews with student focus groups to gain information on their understanding of interdisciplinarity and their awareness of current opportunities.

Project Outputs

The project resulted in a number of outputs, including:

• A Longitudinal Study and Analysis of Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning from ITLR 2017 to ITLR 2023, with an Executive Summary containing key findings and recommendations for action.
• The creation of a Staff Interdisciplinary Hub with extensive material to guide and support staff with interdisciplinarity. This is to be located on the IATL website and to be launched in the first term of the academic year.
• Creation of Interdisciplinary Teams space to allow a network of staff from across campus to connect with other members of staff interested in interdisciplinary teaching and research.
• A refresh of the existing Student Interdisciplinary Hub in conjunction with the Marketing and Communications team.
• We have created completely new case studies based on the qualitative research interviews we undertook with staff from across campus. The case studies illustrate in detail staff pathways and experience of designing, delivering, and assessing interdisciplinary teaching and learning.
• We have reviewed the interviews carried out during a previous WIHEA Interdisciplinary project and generated additional case studies which can also be accessed on the Interdisciplinary Staff Hub.
• An additional output was the creation of a podcast and a film featuring the IATL/IAS Early Career Teaching Fellows that, as well as being featured in the new Interdisciplinary Staff Hub, will be used by IATL and IAS for future promotional activities for the scheme.

Project Legacy

The Student-facing Interdisciplinary Hub is part of the remit of Marketing and Communications and we have worked with them to improve their awareness of the importance of keeping the information up-to-date and IATL will try to work with them on an annual basis to refresh the content.

The Staff-facing Interdisciplinary Hub will be a part of the new IATL website and we hope to encourage other departments to link to it so that it is easy to find. The Hub will enable university staff to learn more about interdisciplinary projects taking place around the University, offer them support and guidance to get involved and provide them with some tools, resources and access to training so that they can begin to incorporate interdisciplinary teaching into their practice. In addition, the Hub will be used as a way of encouraging a network of interdisciplinary practitioners across the university to collaborate and find out about opportunities to contribute to teaching on interdisciplinary modules.

The recommendations of the longitudinal study will be fed back to the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education) to feed into the action plans for the new Education Strategy.

Project Team

Lead: Catherine Hale (WMS)

Lead: Joanne Wale (IATL)