Project Investigator(s): Christine D’Onofrio, Associate Professor of Teaching, Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Faculty of Arts; and Pants Rayner, Curriculum Consultant, CTLT
Project Description
The Bachelor of Media Studies is a multidisciplinary program where diverse methods and perspectives meet around media topics. Two years ago, students reported a lack of connection between disciplines; as such, we began a curriculum renewal project which utilized a paired interview process to bring faculty from diverse disciplines into conversation around aims for student learning, methods, content, and understandings about media. This process culminated in a shared vision statement that has been foundational in creating a coherent program learning structures for the students. For this SoTL seed project, we would like to investigate the impact of this development approach.
Research Questions
- How can paired interviews which explore the disciplinarity of shared themes (e.g. media) be used to navigate the complexities of renewing and creating coherent and structured interdisciplinary programming for students?
- How does the deep conversation which is part of the paired interview process help faculty gain a deeper understanding of each other’s perspectives, thereby creating an interdisciplinary program that is knit together?
- What programmatic tools and infrastructure (e.g. communication, program requirements, course structure, core courses) can this method inform throughout a renewal process for an interdisciplinary setting?
Impact on teaching and learning at UBC
This project will provide a comprehensive approach for how teaching and learning in interdisciplinary programs is held together through deliberate and deep program planning processes. Interdisciplinarity programming can too often focus exclusively on in-class practices, when in reality, teaching and learning in multidisciplinary programs is best supported by an infrastructure that is built upon deep meaning. We seek to develop a set of recommendations and processes for developing program infrastructure that can hold interdisciplinary programs together, which we think will be of deep value to the UBC community given the call for interdisciplinarity in UBC’s strategic plan.