Skills & traits of interdisciplinarians (1)
Oral skills (articulation of one’s ideas, knowledge, projects, research; Presentation skills; Persuasion; Debate skills), Writing skills, Intercultural competence
What are communication skills?
This type of phenomenon is usually multiple, multi-faceted and often multidimensional that appear differently depending on the angle or perspective from which it is viewed.
What is complexity or a complex problem?
Income Inequality, School Violence, Capital Punishment, the Holocaust, Poverty
What are complex problems?
Universities in this historical period were characterized by faith-based (cathedral schools); pre-disciplinarity or a broad, general education consisting of the letters and sciences (i.e., “Liberal Arts” or trivium and quadrivium), law and medicine; and unity of knowledge (or doctrina).
What is the medieval period?
It is the ability to break a problem down into parts that reveal internal and external factors, figure out how each of these parts relates to the others and to the problem as a whole, and identify which parts different disciplines address.
What is systems thinking?
The capacity to analyze, critique, and assess.
What is critical thinking?
It was driven by fragmentation of knowledge, change in student demographics, complex world and technological developments. liberation movements, the end of colonialization/colonialism, and women’s rights movements.
What is the emergence of interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies?
Higher education during this historical period witnessed the ordering and categorization of knowledge (including the emergence of encyclopedia) and the secularization of universities, while promoting the advancement of knowledge (innovation) instead of unity of knowledge.
What is the Enlightenment?
Synthesizing, Reframing, Redefinition, Organization, Iterative skills, Evaluation skills, Translation skills, Dialogue skills
What are integrative skills?
It is an openness to different interpretations based on context and an ability to see that sometimes solutions to problems involve gradients of grey rather than black or white and are best phrased as both/and instead of either/or.
What is tolerance for ambiguity?
African Studies, Latin American Studies, Caribbean Studies, South Asian Studies, East Asian Studies, Russian Studies, Eastern European Studies, Scandinavian Studies, Basque Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, and Israel Studies comprise this type of interdisciplinary studies.
What are Area Studies?
The university in this historical period saw the fragmentation of knowledge into disciplines as well as an increase in specialization triggered by industrialization, the need to demonstrate qualification, and competition for university resources (urbanization).
What is the Industrial Revolution?
Teamwork skills, Listening, The ability to suspend judgment, Leadership, The Ability to be a team player
What are collaboration skills?
It is an openness to information from any and all relevant sources, especially in one’s education, and/or a respect for different types of people because of our common humanity.
What is preference/appreciation for diversity?
Free-standing institutions; Autonomous and cluster colleges; Centers and institutes; Interdisciplinary departments; Interdisciplinary majors, minors, and concentrations; Mainstream and alternative general education programs; Individual courses within disciplinary departments; Tutorials; Independent study and self-designed majors; Travel-study, internships, and practicums
What are types of interdisciplinary study in higher education?
The academy of this period in history was characterized by a Greco-Roman preoccupation (including informality from Plato’s academy and the revival of philosophy), the study of language (Philology), the emergence of art schools, and the invention of the printing press.
What is the Renaissance?
Cultural openness, Interpreting documents and artifacts from other cultures, Discovery skills, Interaction skills, Critical cultural awareness of one’s own culture and of others
What is intercultural communication?
Any mental activity that produces various conceptions of a problem or issue, various ways of dealing with it, and possible solution and responses to it as well as "thinking outside" the box to examine information and seemingly unrelated issues in novel ways.
What is creative thinking?
The cognitive process by which individuals or groups draw on multiple disciplinary perspectives and integrate their insights and modes of thinking to produce a more comprehensive understanding of a complex, realworld problem.
What is Interdisciplinary studies?
Rhetoric, grammar, and logic (the Trivium) as well as math, music, geometry and astronomy (the Quadrivium) comprised this type of broad, general education under the Roman Empire and within universities of medieval Europe.
What are the Liberal Arts or Letters & Arts?