How To Implement Interdisciplinary Courses In The Context Of Emerging Engineering Education?

There are more complex and comprehensive problems challenging the human society.The subdivision of knowledge and the discipline-and professional-centered university education model are facing challenges.Interdisciplinary courses that break the boundaries of majors and departments have gradually become the main grasp of cultivating excellent engineering talent.However,the current research on the detailed description of the course implementation process still needs to be perfected.Therefore,this study adopts a case study method,selecting an undergraduate interdisciplinary course of a university as the research object under the background of emerging engineering education,collecting relevant information through various methods,such as classroom observation,interviews,and questionnaire surveys.Targets,problems,disciplines,iterations,needs of stakeholders,and other curriculum elements are in-depth analysis,so that the course’s implementation process can be descripted in detail.On this foundation,the article explores some possible problems of the interdisciplinary curriculum and their reasons.The implementation of the case interdisciplinary course mainly includes three parts: imparting theoretical knowledge,hosting challenges,and practicing interdisciplinary large-scale project.In the stage of teaching theoretical knowledge,"systematic modules + distributed lectures" is the main form of the course,eight teachers from six college-level unit teach the theoretical knowledge of the eight modules systematically.During the period,it also interspersed with irregular lectures to expand relevant knowledge,thereby laying a solid knowledge foundation for emerging engineering talents in a " from point to area " approach.During the three challenges,students are supposed to complete simple device design.With the help of three "breakthrough" small projects,students can apply interdisciplinary theoretical knowledge and improve practical skills.In the stage of doing interdisciplinary large-scale project,students-in-groups focus on the design and practice of various interdisciplinary projects in different disciplines;the judges evaluate each project from an interdisciplinary perspective,so that students can have a complete experience of engaging in interdisciplinary project research in the field of engineering.In each of the above stages,there are some problems in the implementation of case interdisciplinary course.In the stage of teaching theoretical knowledge,some problems are prominent,such as the lack of relevance between the teaching contents.The absence of procedural standardized assessments,and the extreme pressure of students.In the challenge stage,there are problems such as usefulness of individual challenge topics and polarization of students.During the project topic selection,implementation and evaluation phases,it arises that lack of participation and guidance from teachers,the imbalance of interdisciplinarity between projects,and the imperfect curriculum supporting system.From the perspective of organization and teaching,those problems can be summarized into two types: problems about teaching organization and problems about knowledge giving or receiving.Bernstein’s theory of teaching discourse is used to analyze the causes of those problems in this study.It is found that the weak classification,weak structure,and strong classification of interdisciplinary teaching organizations result in the loose organization of the teaching group,which has led to a series of organization problems;in the process of creating,transmitting and learning interdisciplinary knowledge,the implementation of distribution rules,recontextualization rules,and evaluation rules has caused deviations,which in turn caused a series of knowledge transferring problems.In response to the above problems,the author puts forward four suggestions:avoiding parental management and the teaching team should participate in the course actively;following the interdisciplinary principle of "limited choice + unlimited integration";choosing "frontier + progressive" problems as the themes of interdisciplinary courses;strengthening the structure of interdisciplinary teaching group to improve the incentive and guarantee system.