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30 students cap
Societal group challenge
Society linked
Case 3
Transdisciplinary Master’s Insert
The Transdisciplinary Master’s Insert (TDMI) ‘Shaping Responsible Futures’ spans over two quartiles (Q2 and Q3) and acts as a practical immersion programme, where diverse Master’s students come together in a highly trans-skill scaffolded environment. Primarily they solve open ended problems directly linked to society. I.e. a challenge based programme, with substantial focus on the transdisciplinary process skills, a facet many other programmes have not yet prioritised thoroughly.
A maximum of 30 students per year can enter via a stipulated selection process (motivation letter and interviews). The insert consists of six courses, with varying degrees of overlap and connection. Innovative course included: creative intelligence, systems thinking, societal leadership, change making, transdisciplinary working, futurism. This 30 EC programme does not officially count towards one’s final master credits, but a certificate “Shaping Responsible Futures”, is awarded.
TDMI underwent one round of analysis from a STRIPES researcher from November 2020 to April 2021. We undertook to investigate the challenges and value perceptions of interdisciplinary challenge-based learning as well as to what extent the transdisciplinary training was evident in the final products. Furthermore, we looked into which type of student enrols for an extracurricular course such as this. A descriptive report was compiled
What we learned
The labour intensive coaching in this module may be problematic if future expansion or higher student numbers are sought.
Teachers themselves were excited to be a part of this project, they were developing competencies and learning a lot from the other disciplines and stakeholder challenges.
The open nature of the challenges meant that students struggled to set reasonable boundaries on quality and scope of their projects. This struggle caused anxiety and waste of time, and may have been circumvented if expectations were better defined by teachers/coaches.
Feedback and personal attention that the student received was highly valued.
These motivated students showed a high epistemic adaptability and willingness to learn from other disciplines.
“Front heavy” skills training (intensive 2 weeks) laid a solid foundation for teamwork and project skills.
More Information
Related Publications
Visscher, K. , Johnson, C. , MacLeod, M. A. J. & van der Veen, J. (2022)
Multi-, inter- and transdisciplinarity in challenge-based engineering education
