A model for conducting and assessing interdisciplinary undergraduate dissertations

Abstract

This paper presents an effort to create a unified model for conducting and assessing undergraduate dissertations, shared by all disciplines involved in computer game development at a Swedish university. Computer game development includes technology-oriented disciplines as well as disciplines with aesthetical traditions. The challenge has been to create a unified process and assessment procedure while maintaining the individual disciplines’ academic standards. The unification has been achieved through the development of the Interdisciplinary Dissertation Model – a shared model where the assessment is focused on fundamental academic principles, and there is a clear separation between summative and formative assessment and well-defined interaction loops between examiners, supervisors and students. Examiners from all involved disciplines have regular meetings focusing on creating an interdisciplinary view on the summative assessment of undergraduate dissertations. The model developed has been successful in that it allows for a unified process for disciplines from fundamentally different academic traditions. The quality of the examined dissertations has been evaluated in a national evaluation. The result shows that all participating disciplines meet the requirements from their respective communities. This shows that the proposed model successfully unifies disciplines without sacrificing the quality in any discipline.

Keywords:

• undergraduate dissertation
• interdisciplinary
• assessment

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Stefan Ekman, Henrik Gustavsson and Ulf Wilhelmsson for their collaboration in creating IDM. The author would also like to thank Per Backlund, Stefan Ekman and Björn Berg Marklund for valuable comments on this paper.