Support in development
For support in developing an interdisciplinary course or programme, you can contact the senior faculty administrators (utbildningsledare) at the faculty offices (områdeskanslier), find out about the experiences of colleagues or receive targeted consultative support from the Unit for Academic Teaching and Learning. You can also obtain support from the educational development units at the disciplinary domains. Another tip is to involve students.
Senior faculty administrators
Senior faculty administrators at the faculty offices for humanities and social sciences, science and technology, and medicine and pharmacy can provide assistance. They have a good overview of their faculty/domain and access to other faculties/domains and can often guide and mediate contacts between lecturers. Furthermore, they know about the administrative and financial aspects of interdisciplinary cooperation and how to manage them.
Colleagues
The experience of colleagues who have already conducted interdisciplinary courses is valuable. Contacts of this kind can also provide tips and advice on administrative matters, but particularly on the setup and implementation of various teaching elements. Experience can be gained through dialogue and/or observation of teaching sessions, which can be followed by a discussion with the person teaching.
Unit for Academic Teaching and Learning
The Unit for Academic Teaching and Learning can assist with pedagogical issues related to interdisciplinary teaching and assessment as well as the formulation of intended learning outcomes and grading criteria. The unit provides targeted consultative support to individual departments and offers University-wide courses. These include the ‘Course Development Course’, which offers lecturers and teaching teams an opportunity to plan a new (or further develop an existing) course in a pedagogically sound way. The unit has a multidisciplinary group of educational developers and points of contact with the whole University.
Educational development units at disciplinary domains
The disciplinary domains of science and technology and medicine and pharmacy each have educational development units – the Council for Educational Development at the Faculty of Science and Technology (TUR) and the Pedagogical Node at the Disciplinary Domain of Medicine and Pharmacy respectively – which can be good resources when developing new courses.
Student council
One tip is to involve students in the development process. For example, you could establish a student council to act as a sounding board in course development work. A council of this kind should ideally be composed of students with a background in the subjects concerned. It is also possible to create a student council during the first round of the course/programme in order to collect course participants’ perspectives, suggestions and opinions while the course is in progress. Students can also contribute to the development of course evaluation questions that capture students’ views on the treatment of the interdisciplinary dimension. Contact the relevant student union for help in finding student representatives.