This study reports on a four-year project to embed academic literacy within one core course of a Bachelor of Education program. It involves an interdisciplinary collaboration between learning advisors, as literacy specialists, and lecturers, as subject specialists. It examines their roles and responsibilities and lecturers' perspectives when…

Much scholarship available on team-teaching focuses on K-12 programming, with limited examples in post-secondary education. Adding to the growing research on college-level team-taught courses, this reflection describes how interdisciplinary team-teaching can offer not only a pedagogically innovative experience for students but also highlight the…

In the final article of the special issue, we offer a reflection on the ideas presented by the authors and recommendations for future research on implementation and assessment of Global, International, and Intercultural (GII) competencies in higher education. Themes identified from the articles include the intersection of GII competencies and…

Threshold concepts are those transformative concepts in a discipline that are often difficult to understand when first encountered, but when mastered they transform students, both epistemologically and ontologically in relation to the discipline. Using the characteristics of threshold concepts, existing curricula and summative content analysis of…

Environmental challenges are often global in scope and require solutions that integrate knowledge across disciplines, cultures, and organizations. Solutions to these challenges will come from diverse teams and not from individuals or single academic disciplines; therefore, graduate students must be trained to work in these diverse teams. In this…

Academics at the coalface of teaching and learning often feel undersupported, underprepared, and underconfident in "internationalizing the curriculum" (IoC). The formal, structured programs designed by institutions to meet the needs of academics for continuing professional learning (CPL) in our rapidly changing sector fail to engage many…

In recent years, mathematical and quantitative arguments have become prominent in the media as well as in politics, business, and science conversations. This has led to multiple calls for mathematics to be more accessible and meaningful to a wider range of the population (AMATYC, 2006; Cerrito, 1996; Cheney, 1989; Cohen, 1982; College Board, 1983;…

The beginning of modern science is marked by efforts of pioneers to understand the natural world using a quantitative approach. As Galileo wrote, "the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics". The traditional undergraduate course curriculum is heavily focused on individual disciplines like biology, physics, chemistry,…

Mechatronic systems that couple mechanical and electrical systems with the help of computer control are forcing a paradigm shift in the design, manufacture, and implementation of mechanical devices. The inherently interdisciplinary nature of these systems generates exciting new opportunities for developing a hands-on, inventive, and…

hapTEL, an interdisciplinary project funded by two UK research councils from 2007 to 2011, involves a large interdisciplinary team (with undergraduate and post-graduate student participants) which has been developing and evaluating a virtual learning system within an HE healthcare education setting, working on three overlapping strands. Strand 1…

An essential difficulty in solving practical problems that are not like the ones a student has solved before is discerning the core of the problem. It is claimed that discernment has to be trained by variation--by varying the context of the assignments in which students have to identify and grasp their "underlying form". A decisive…

Many students come to college with little knowledge of or interest in traditional humanities topics; however, a college teacher of humanities can use science fiction as a "door in," a tool to take students from the known to the unknown. Literary elements such as characterization, plot, setting, theme, and point of view are present in science…

The director of curriculum development at Maharishi International University describes background and design of the program based on the Science of Creative Intelligence (SCI) as a unifying theoretical structure and on transcendental meditation (TM) for expanding awareness and utilizing videotape technology in its core curriculum courses. (JT)

The renewed interest in interdisciplinary studies is producing different instructional approaches that are providing an important corrective to the limited and fragmented perspectives of the individual academic disciplines. Since they are in the curricular mainstream as requirements for all students, interdisciplinary offerings may have more…

The ILS program called "Learning With Young Children", which stressed the use of interdisciplinary learning and provides students with legitimate academic alternatives, is discussed. Questions from the student daily logs conclude each section. (BP)