Need Analysis

Why address interdisciplinary collaboration?

Benefits and Necessity of Interdisciplinary Learning & Collaboration

Prepares students for real-world workforce (Stasz et al, 1996), where employers are increasingly looking for 21st century soft skills in their employees, especially for the highly interdisciplinary fields such as design and technology fields on NYU Brooklyn.

- Enhances 21st century skills, including:
  - creativity (Page, 2007)
  - problem solving (Mansilla and Durasing, 2007)
  - critical thinking (Newell, 1994)
- communication (Klein, 1990)

vs

Current student Experience

Interdisciplinary collaboration is largely missing and students do not have much chance to practice their interdisciplinary communication and collaboration skills:

NYU Brooklyn grad students do not have much chance collaborating with students outside of their program.
NYU Brooklyn students do not put in much effort in looking for interdisciplinary resources/ collaboration opportunities.

Deep Dive into Current Situations

1. Students are not well-prepared for workplace soft skills in class.

Classes do not prepare students to engage in soft skills or real work force.

"Students enroll credits to do internship. Companies comment more on students’ non-technical abilities: able to ask questions, communicate with others on team, organized, take initiative in projects... Most engineering courses don’t address those." ------ faculty interview

"I prefer solo projects, so I can tackle every aspect of a project. Group projects are fun, need everyone on it and responsible. Logistically, it is more challenging."

2. Students are not participating in much interdisciplinary collaborations outside of class.

Students lack awareness of NYU Brooklyn resources/opportunities/people.

"Was able to find Interdisciplinary courses only because it was cross-listed also in my own program."

"I somewhat know something is happening but like, I don't really know that much about it. So I feel less inclined to go or see."

"Internship fair is vey helpful, but I only know about it this year, after 3 years."

"To collaborate on project, Have to find the people who also cares about it first. Don’t know where they are."

Students don't make the effort to search for resources or make time for community event.

"The collaboration is for class, if it were not mandated I would not."

"Don’t take too much activities in NYU."

"After class just go home and do my own thing. Not much chance to know people from other majors."

People on average put in 2.4/5 effort into finding resources.

Events don't purposefully facilitate community-building activities.

"I thought that the onboardings was ill organized... We all sit down in seats and then they come in and they're like, we're gonna give you guys 20 minutes to just mingle and I was like, ok, yeah, you feel weird to stand up and like walk around"

"The maker space sessions are not one on one, but it's not necessarily collaborative. It's like me going to learn a skill. So I learned the skill and then get to maybe make use of the space but not necessarily like meeting more people."

"I took one class outside of my department, but it didn't have any collaborative project."

Gap Analysis

Why don't students engage in interdisciplinary collaboration?

Knowledge

Students lack knowledge about the benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration.
Students lack awareness of NYU Brooklyn resources, opportunities, and people.

Skill

Students have a hard time exploring NYU Brooklyn resources/opportunities/people.

Motivation

Students don’t prioritize community and collaboration to make time searching for resources and attending community events.
Students don't feel comfortable going to events without knowing anyone beforehand.

Environment

Classes do not prepare students to engage in soft skills or the real work force.
Community events are planned without respecting the complexity of students' schedules.
Events don't purposefully facilitate community-building activities.

Why instructional intervention?

Among the reasons that we have identified for the lack of interdisciplinary collaboration, there were 2 main categories: on environmental/ institution level, and on individual level. Solution to systematic problems tend to be logistical and user experience projects, while problems on the individual level could be solved by education. Solving problems on institutional level is difficult and complex, but educating people on an individual level is much more doable. Thus, we decided to intervene with instruction.

Systematic

Examples:

Events not taking consideration of people's schedule.
Departments do not advertise their events outside of their program due to budget and prioritizing their own students, making events harder to access for students from other deparments.

Individual