On Monday, March 4th, the ICoP met to discuss to how to promotes interdisciplinary thinking in the classroom.

After a brief round of introductions between veterans ICoP Members and ‘newbees’, we welcomed two guest speakers.

• Sauder instructor Paul Cubbon will shared his experiences designing COMM 486S/JRNL 520A, a new course on social media, and many other interdisciplinary courses he has helped to create. COMM 486s/JRNL 520A is cross-listed in Commerce and Journalism and is co-taught by Cubbon and Alfred Hermida. (Click here to see Dr. Cubbon’s UBC TedX Talk.)  Paul gave an energetic and inspiring presentation on how to work within and around structural challenges to build innovative interdisciplinary courses. For advice and techniques, check out Paul’s Handout (pdf).
• Karla Pollmann, visiting scholar from the University of Kent, has been conducting research this year at UBC for a project entitled, “Go Beyond Boundaries: Designing an Interdisciplinary Graduate Teaching Programme.” She has been observing the different forms of interdisciplinarity at UBC. She share some of her reflections so far with us, noting that UBC Mix offers an innovative “grassroots” model that could be taken up by universities in the UK and Europe. She distinguished between different forms of interdisciplinary education and institutional support, from student-driven to teacher-driven models, program-based models, and short vs. longterm approaches. For summaries of these different forms, see Karla’s Handout (pdf).

After Paul and Karla’s helpful presentations, the remainder of the meeting was devoted to networking and casual sharing about past, current, and future interdisciplinary efforts.

Our next meeting is scheduled for April 25, 2013. See you there!