Postgraduate Course: Interdisciplinary Futures (fusion on-site) (EFIE11023)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh Futures Institute |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 10 |
ECTS Credits | 5 |
| Summary | Through seminars, presentations, and teamwork, students will develop the critical and creative skills necessary to becoming interdisciplinary thinkers. They will build an understanding of an array of disciplinary perspectives and approaches, and will frame them in the context of a challenge theme (a pressing issue of global importance). |
| Course description |
The first semester shared course 'Interdisciplinary Futures' will introduce students to interdisciplinary thinking. They will be invited, in teams of peers drawn from different programmes, to reflect on ways of knowing in the context of disciplinarity, with this reflection being supported by selected readings and academic presentations. The same teams will be invited to come together to apply their new skills to a prototype challenge, for example, to design mock-ups of sustainable alternatives to everyday products. Finally, students will be invited to apply multiple disciplinary perspectives to a problem relevant to an EFI postgraduate programme.
Five-week teaching block structure:
1) Creative icebreakers & team formation; perspectives on ways of knowing (2 hours).
2) Presentation of team reflections on life-wide learning with a focus on interrogating disciplinarity (2 hours).
3) Approaches to research and creativity: focus on sciences (1 hour); focus on social sciences (1 hour).
4) Focus on arts and humanities (1 hour); a human-centred intersectional approach to innovation: design thinking & prototype challenge (2 hours plus 4 hours of supported work in the Ideation Studio).
5) Sharing outcomes of team challenge; discussion/synthesis (2 hours).
The teaching will draw on different pedagogical approaches from mini-lectures and Q&As to highly interactive interdisciplinary team activities in the classroom, outside the classroom, and in the maker spaces in the EFI building. The course will entail fusion delivery (physical/online), with interaction between co-present and remote students, through recorded sessions, online forums accessible to all, and communication tools for practical group work. Lectures will be streamed online and recorded for access by synchronous and asynchronous remote students. Panel and group discussions will be digitally recorded by students and continued online.
Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) - On-Site Fusion Course Delivery Information:
The Edinburgh Futures Institute will teach this course in a way that enables online and on-campus students to study together. This approach (our 'fusion' teaching model) offers students flexible and inclusive ways to study, and the ability to choose whether to be on-campus or online at the level of the individual course. It also opens up ways for diverse groups of students to study together regardless of geographical location. To enable this, the course will use technologies to record and live-stream student and staff participation during their teaching and learning activities. Students should be aware that:
- Classrooms used in this course will have additional technology in place: students might not be able to sit in areas away from microphones or outside the field of view of all cameras.
- Unless the lecturer or tutor indicates otherwise you should assume the session is being recorded.
As part of your course, you will need access to a personal computing device. Unless otherwise stated activities will be web browser based and as a minimum we recommend a device with a physical keyboard and screen that can access the internet.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Interrogate different disciplinary approaches to research and creativity.
- Apply interdisciplinary perspective-taking.
- Demonstrate competence in core skills including independent research, planning and writing, and group collaboration.
- Apply knowledge, skills, and understanding through a reflective synthesis of the ideas discussed and experienced on the course.
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Reading List
Bassot, B. 2015, The Reflective Practice Guide: An interdisciplinary approach to critical reflection, Routledge.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. 2013, Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention, Harper Perennial.
Dunne, A., & Raby, F. 2013, Speculative Everything: design, fiction, and social dreaming, MIT press.
Eisner, E., 'Aesthetic Modes of Knowing', in E. Eisner (ed.), Learning and Teaching the Ways of Knowing: Eighty-fourth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part 2, 1985, National Society for the Study of Education, Chicago.
Grant, A. 2021, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know, WH Allen.
Harraway, D. 2016, Staying with the Trouble (Experimental Futures): Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Duke University Press Books.
Kalb, C. 2017, 'What Makes a Genius?' This story appears in the May 2017 issue of National Geographic magazine: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/genius-genetics-intelligence-neuroscience-creativity-einstein
Jung, R. 2018, The Cambridge Handbook of the Neuroscience of Creativity (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology), CUP.
Kelley, D. 2015, Creative Confidence, Harper Collins.
Kleon, A. 2012, Steal Like an Artist, Workman.
Lury, C. 2020, Routledge Handbook of Interdisciplinary Research Methods, Routledge.
Repko, A. F., Szostak, R., & Buchberger, M. P. 2020, Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies, Sage.
Repko, A. F., & Szostak, R. 2021, Interdisciplinary Research: Process and Theory, Sage
Schon, D. A. 1983, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals think in action, Basic Books. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
The course develops graduate skills in research, enquiry, and communication (SCQF 1 and 4), in creative practice (SCQF 2).
By working in groups, they will develop autonomy, accountability, and skills in working with others effectively (SCQF 3 and 5). |
| Keywords | EFI,Edinburgh Futures Institute,Level 11,Postgraduate,Interdisciplinary,Creative Skills,Creativity |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Larissa Pschetz
Tel:
Email: L.Pschetz@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | |
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