Designing Interdisciplinary Group Projects for First Year Students

Silva, G., Herckis, L., Owen, A. and Soluri, J.

"Feeding the World, Feeding Ourselves requires first year students to complete a community-engaged field project that deeply explores one of several course themes. This strategy can be used by instructors in various disciplines. Whole-class meetings and small group “recitations” were interleaved throughout the semester. Each recitation was led by an instructor with a different disciplinary background, giving subsets of students complementary disciplinary perspectives on course themes. Final project teams were composed of one student from each of the four recitations. Each project team was assigned a mentor from the faculty teaching team and tasked with collaboratively solving an authentic problem. Teams applied various methodological approaches including literature review, survey, participant observation, interviews, and document analysis. This strategy for designing first-year student project teams with diverse perspectives was employed for the first time in Spring 2019 and proved a rewarding learning experience for students."

Gloria Silva, Chemistry
Lauren Herckis, Simon Initiative
Abigail Owen, History
John Soluri, History