Increasing undergraduate interdisciplinary exposure through an interdisciplinary web-based video series

ABSTRACT

There is a need for innovative approaches in the classroom to increase student preparedness to address and solve some of today’s complex social problems. Interdisciplinary courses can be one way to accomplish this. This is an exploratory study to examine if an interdisciplinary web-based video series is associated with improvements in interdisciplinary competence. The course is taught using a flipped pedagogical approach in which a web-based interdisciplinary video series first delivers exposure of content to students and class time is then spent in solving real world problems in interdisciplinary teams. Goals of the study include introducing an innovative approach to teaching interdisciplinary courses, examining if it is associated with an improvement in interdisciplinary competence, and evaluating student receptivity. In this paper we describe this approach using a case study in obesity education.

KEYWORDS:

• Interdisciplinarity
• health education
• blended learning
• flipped classroom
• student engagement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported, in part, by Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Higher Education Challenge Grant no. [2013-70003-20922] from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture; [2013-70003-20922].

Notes on contributors

Amber J. Hammons

Amber J. Hammons is an Associate Professor in the Department of Child and Family Science at California State University, Fresno. Her research involves the study of family interactions and health. She is particularly interested in family and community factors that contribute to obesity and she takes a whole family approach in addressing these topics. Most recently she has been involved as a Co-PD in the implementation of an obesity prevention program for Hispanic families that aims to improve health through increased physical activity, fruit and vegetable consumption, and family togetherness.

Barbara Fiese

Barbara Fiese, PhD, is a clinical and developmental psychologist whose research focuses on family factors that promote health and wellbeing in children. She holds the Pampered Chef, Ltd., Endowed Chair in Family Resiliency and is Professor and Director of the Family Resiliency Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with affiliated appointments in the Departments of Pediatrics and Psychology. She is considered one of the national experts in the role that shared family mealtimes may play in promoting health.

Brenda Koester

Brenda Koester is Assistant Director of the Family Resiliency Center at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her research and policy work centers around food insecurity; children’s feeding programs; effective community collaborations; and translating research into policy and practice and she serves as Co-PD and Co-I on several externally funded projects. She has experience supporting and coordinating transdisciplinary teams and co-instructs the HDFS 494 Undergraduate Transdisciplinary Research Course.

Gabriela L. Garcia

Gabriela L. Garcia is an expert in mixed-methods evaluation design, project management, report writing, and STEM-based higher education programs. She has conducted mixed-method evaluations of a variety of foundation- and federally funded K-12 and higher education STEM and health education initiatives, and took part in the Illinois Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (I-STEM) Education Initiative. She led federally funded project evaluations, including an evaluation of a STEM scholarship program for undergraduate students and an evaluation of a validation study of an early childhood teacher evaluation framework.

Loran Parker

Loran Parkerd is an education researcher and evaluator with 10+years of experience working in complex, non-school settings. Her interests are research, development and evaluation of education experiences in informal contexts (museums, science centers, community centers, zoos and aquariums); evaluation of teacher/faculty professional development experiences and institutional change in education; as well as, research and evaluation of undergraduate education, experiential learning, and career training experiences. She has had a leadership role in the development of hundreds of grant proposals and managed the research and evaluation components of more than a dozen education research and development projects.

Dorothy Teegarden

Dorothy Teegarden is a Professor in the Department of Nutrition Science at Purdue University. One of her primary research areas is on identifying and regulating molecular mechanisms to prevent cancer, with a particular focus on obesity. She is the Director of the NIH funded Purdue Cancer Prevention Internship Program, which includes training undergraduates in interdisciplinary research skills. She also serves as the Director of the Purdue Women’s Global Health Institute.