Promoting integrative learning across disciplines

Abstract

Integrative learning is a process in which students make connections for the skills or knowledge they learned from different sources of learning experiences (Reynolds & Patton, 2016). At a micro-level, it represents the students’ abilities to relate prior experience with new situations, and to transfer knowledge or skills to solve real-world problems within the discipline. More importantly, it describes a more advanced abilities to make connection across disciplines (macro-level). A good teacher helps students develop connections with their prior knowledge, while an excellent teacher should find a way to help them extend their learning to other disciplines. However, opportunity to develop and assess such abilities across disciplines is limited in higher education. To bridge this gap, a co-curricular activity was designed to provide a platform to develop and assess students’ integrative learning at a macro-level, by using student learning portfolio and assessment rubric. Students were required to design community services by making use of their own discipline knowledge. Findings suggested that participants were generally confident to identify connection to their own prior experience (micro-level), but less confident to connect to other disciplines or to choose appropriate form to communicate with people having different background (macro-level). This presentation will discuss the implication of the results and discuss possible intervention to address some barriers so that a good teacher could transform to an excellent teacher.