Creating interdisciplinary courses and programmes

Uppsala University’s Mission, Goals and Strategies (UFV 2018/641) states that the range of courses and programmes offered by the University will be varied and flexible so as to stimulate tailor-made degrees with unique combinations of subjects and lifelong learning. It goes on to specify that:

• the University will seek to develop more transdisciplinary programmes and courses based on new combinations of subjects, preferably across disciplinary domain boundaries.
• the University needs an ability to continuously develop and renew its education and research, so as to meet steadily changing circumstances and challenges in society and working life.
• the mission of Uppsala University is to gain and disseminate knowledge for the benefit of humankind and for a better world.

Many current societal challenges require cross-cutting approaches. With its rich disciplinary breadth, Uppsala University is in a good position to offer its students high-quality interdisciplinary courses and programmes. Such courses and programmes already exist now, but in many cases there is potential to deepen the interdisciplinary dimension and establish new collaborations. Creating a new interdisciplinary course or programme can often be a rather big step and university teachers who have attempted it have often run into obstacles of one kind or another.

On these pages, we have collected advice and tips for anyone planning to develop or create a new interdisciplinary course or programme, whether they are a lecturer, a director of studies, a faculty programme coordinator or a programme coordinator. We hope that this material will facilitate the process, in both administrative and educational respects. The focus is on interdisciplinary education at Bachelor’s and Master’s level, but the intention is to go on to include advice and tips regarding interdisciplinary doctoral education.

The content on these webpages has been developed by the following working group:

• Åsa Kettis, Head of Division, Quality Enhancement (convening)
• Sara Lilja Visén, Senior Faculty Administrator, Office for Humanities and Social Sciences
• Camilla Maandi, Head of Unit, Quality and Evaluation, Division for Quality Enhancement
• Ulrike Schnaas, Educational Developer, Academic Teaching and Learning, Division for Quality Enhancement
• Sofia Stenler, Senior Faculty Administrator, Education and Staff Recruitment Unit, Office for Science and Technology
• Joakim Svartheden, Educational Developer, MedfarmDoIT, Office for Medicine and Pharmacy

The working group has incorporated insights from teachers with experience in cross-disciplinary teaching in its work.