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ABSTRACT
In order to increase student commitment from the beginning of students’ university careers, the Technische Universität Darmstadt has introduced interdisciplinary study projects involving first-year students from the engineering, natural, social and history, economics and/or human sciences departments. The didactic concept includes sophisticated task design, individual responsibility and a differentiated support system. Using a self-determination theory framework, this study examined the effects of the projects based on survey findings from two projects with more than 1000 students. The results showed that the projects were successful in fulfilling students’ basic psychological needs and in promoting students’ academic engagement. Basic psychological needs were found to be significant predictors of academic engagement. These findings suggest that interdisciplinary study projects can potentially contribute to improving higher education as they fulfil students’ basic psychological needs for competence, relatedness and autonomy and enhance students’ academic engagement.
Acknowledgment
The authors are responsible for the contents of the publication.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Franziska D. Koch graduated from Heidelberg University with an M.Sc. in Psychology in 2014. She is currently a research associate in the Institute for Psychology at the Technische Universität Darmstadt. Her research interests focus on the evaluation and improvement of higher education.
Andrea Dirsch-Weigand After her studies of history and knowledge and information management, Andrea Dirsch-Weigand has gained many years of experience as researcher, knowledge and project manager in the Fraunhofer Integrated Information and Publication Systems Institute, the German Software Cluster and the chamber of commerce at Darmstadt. Since 2014, she is in charge of coordinating interdisciplinary study projects at the Technische Universität Darmstadt. Her interests focus on evidence-based teaching and learning and the implementation of innovative teaching and learning formats.
Malte Awolin graduated as a social scientist from the University of Mannheim, Germany, in 2011. From 2011 until now, he is scientific member at the Centre for Educational Development, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany. As an educational consultant, he supports different departments to realise interdisciplinary design projects. Therefore, he also conducts courses in which student tutors are trained to develop effective teamwork in the interdisciplinary project teams. Alongside, he investigates empirically how the didactic concept could be designed more efficiently.
Rebecca J. Pinkelman graduated from Chadron State College with a B.S. in Chemistry and Biology in 2008. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in 2010 and 2014, respectively. She is currently a post-doctoral research scientist in the Mechanical and Process Engineering Department at the Technische Universität Darmstadt.
Manfred J. Hampe graduated from Technische Universität Clausthal in 1976 and received his doctorate in engineering from Technische Universität München in 1980. He worked as a process engineer in the central research division of Bayer AG in Leverkusen before he became full professor of Thermal Process Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Technische Universität Darmstadt in 1995. His research interests are in the field of transport phenomena at fluid interfaces. He has been the chairman of the Working Party on Education in Chemical and Process Engineering of the VDI-Society for Chemical and Process Engineering and member of the European Working Party on Education in Chemical Engineering for many years. He is the vice-chairman of the council of the faculties of mechanical and process engineering in Germany and chairman of 4ING, the German Council of University Faculties in Engineering and Informatics. Between 2004 and 2013, he was one of the 19 German Bologna experts. He received the ars legendi award 2013 of the Stifterverband and the German Rectors Conference.