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 | *EFI Shared Core Course*
Please Note:
This course is only available to students enrolled on one of Edinburgh Futures Institute's postgraduate programmes.
Through seminars, presentations, and teamwork, students will develop the critical and creative skills necessary to becoming interdisciplinary thinkers. They will build a practical 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 Semester 1 EFI Shared Core course 'Interdisciplinary Futures' will introduce students to interdisciplinary thinking.
Students will be invited to reflect on their own disciplinary knowledge and how they might apply that in an interdisciplinary setting; to consider what makes for a good collaboration and how to work in a group effectively. They will be invited, in teams of peers drawn from different programmes, to come together to apply their new skills to a specific challenge theme, for example, to design mock-ups of sustainable alternatives to systems, events and experiences, or products. Content will be delivered via a mixture of lectures, case studies, Q&As, on-line asynchronous activities, group work, student presentations, discussion and drop-in sessions. The course will culminate in a hybrid mini-conference, where students will share digital poster presentations and discuss their work with one another.
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
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| Academic year 2024/25, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
| Course Start Date |
16/09/2024 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
100
(
Lecture Hours 3,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 8,
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 4,
Formative Assessment Hours 2,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
81 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Summative Assessment:
The course will be assessed by means of the following assessment components:
1) Illustrated Group Report (100%)
An illustrated group report documenting the team challenge (800 words) plus an c. 800-word reflection on the process and challenges of interdisciplinary working, including a note of the roles and contributions of each individual team member. Both parts will be submitted as one 1,600-word assignment.
The group report is intended to provide an analogue for real-world outputs from interdisciplinary research, which will usually involve a collaboratively authored component.
Submission will occur at the end of the course, giving students time to gain further input from their peers and course team on particular challenges and successes they may have experienced, both synchronously via the mini-conference and asynchronously via the digital poster presentations (these will be embedded in Miro to allow comments). |
| Feedback |
Formative feedback will be provided verbally by peers and lead academics during the group work sessions and asynchronously via comments on online works-in-progress from peers, TAs and teaching team.
Summative feedback will be provided in written form after assignments are handed in.
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| No Exam Information |
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
Indicative Reading List:
Essential Reading:
Frodeman, R. (Ed.). 2017. The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity. Oxford University Press.
Gidley, Jennifer M., 2017. The Future: A Very Short Introduction. Very Short Introductions, Oxford.
Repko, A. F., Phillips Buchberger, M. (eds.) 2020. Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies. Sage.
Recommended Reading:
Dunne, A., & Raby, F. 2013, Speculative Everything: design, fiction, and social dreaming, MIT press.
Repko, A. F., & Szostak, R. 2021, Interdisciplinary Research: Process and Theory, Sage
Further Reading:
Barry, A. and Born, G.(Eds.). 2013. Interdisciplinarity: Reconfigurations of the Social and Natural Sciences. Routledge.
Bassot, B. 2015. The Reflective Practice Guide: An interdisciplinary approach to critical reflection. Routledge.
Callard, F., Fitzgerald, D. 2015. Rethinking Interdisciplinarity across the Social Sciences and Neurosciences. Springer Nature.
Frodeman, R. 2013. Sustainable Knowledge a Theory of Interdisciplinarity. Palgrave Macmillan.
Gaver, W. 2012. ¿What should we expect from research through design?¿, CHI '12: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2207676.2208538
Green, J. L., Baker, W.D. (Eds.). 2018. Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Programmes in Higher Education: Exploring Challenges in Designing and Teaching. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Lury, C., Wakeford, N. (Eds.). 2012. Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social. Routledge.
Nicolescu, B. 2014. ¿Methodology of Transdisciplinarity¿. World futures. 70(3-4):186-199. doi:10.1080/02604027.2014.934631
Repko A. F., Szostak R. (eds.) 2012. Case Studies in Interdisciplinary Research. SAGE.
Schon, D. A. 1983, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals think in action, Basic Books.
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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 Jane McKie
Tel:
Email: Jane.McKie@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Abby Gleave
Tel: (0131 6)51 1337
Email: abby.gleave@ed.ac.uk |
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