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. 2012 Spring;10(2):A88-95.
Epub 2012 Mar 15.

Assessing development of an interdisciplinary perspective in an undergraduate neuroscience course

Kevin M Crisp  1 , Gary M Muir
Affiliations

Assessing development of an interdisciplinary perspective in an undergraduate neuroscience course

Kevin M Crisp et al. J Undergrad Neurosci Educ. 2012 Spring.

Abstract

Neuroscience is an intrinsically interdisciplinary (ID) field yet little has been published regarding assessment of ID learning in undergraduate neuroscience students. This study attempted to empirically assess the development of an interdisciplinary perspective in 25 undergraduate neuroscience students in a neuroscience program core course. Data were collected using two simple assessment instruments: 1) written responses to the open-ended question "What is neuroscience?" and 2) a term-discipline relevance survey in which students indicated all disciplinary perspectives to which terms (such as electrode, taste, dx/dt) were relevant. Comparison of student responses early in the course (week 1 or 5) and at the end of the course (week 15) showed evidence of development of an interdisciplinary perspective, with students using significantly more integrative terms in their responses and demonstrating an increased awareness of the complexity of the field of neuroscience.

Keywords: assessment; content analysis; integration; intended learning outcomes; interdisciplinary learning.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Student responses regarding the “relatedness” of a term to disciplines during week 5 were highly correlated with their responses during week 15 (adjusted R2=0.92; p<0.001). Responses were fit using the linear model y = 0.9793x + 5.9251. Each point represents the percent of students that related one term to a particular discipline. Some points (such as 0,0) overlap.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Gains in relevance by discipline.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Tree diagram of term relevance by discipline when survey was completed by the neuroscience class. Week 5 term relevance is shown in blue, week 15 data are shown in green.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Tree diagram of term relevance by discipline when survey was completed by the biopsychology class (week 7).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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