Interdisciplinary partnerships make an impact!

While there can be institutional and disciplinary challenges in interdisciplinary collaborations, the benefits can be striking. The work of Evely (2010) highlight some of these benefits:

  • new perspectives on complex, dynamic problems
  • a more holistic view of a problem that is better suited to targeting the underlying drivers and processes…
  • the selection of more appropriate research methodologies
  • greater flexibility in research approach and implementation; and
  • new information and insights that would not have been achieved by single disciplinary or epistemological perspectives alone. (Evely et al., 2010, p. 442)

For such reasons, The Monash Education Academy encourages Inter-Faculty collaborations through its Inter-Faculty Transformation Grant (IFTG) scheme. It champions cross-disciplinary team projects that have the capacity to effect new and sustainable change to educational practice across more than one Faculty at the University. Projects are funded up to a maximum of $70,000 over 2 years.

In 2019, a record number of applications were received and four projects were funded:

  1. Development of resources to support induction and access processes for students, staff and industry partners to facilitate their use Monash Makerspaces (for example, in Engineering, the Woodside Design and Build labs, newly established fabrication labs in MADA, and future hands-on interdisciplinary/cross faculty learning spaces). 
    Project team lead - Veronica Halupka, Faculty of Engineering
  2. Development of an evidence-informed educational resource to support Monash educators to teach to develop students’ tolerance of uncertainty and ambiguity. 
    Project team lead – Michelle Lazarus, Faculty of MNHS
  3. Development of resources to teach students to act as expert witnesses in court simulations and mock trial, for use by Faculties within Monash. This will include guidelines for how to design these simulations, provision of examples, and expert witness training materials.
    Project team lead – Stephen Barkoczy, Faculty of Law
  4. Creation of a research-informed toolkit of learning activities and guidelines that educators can use to integrate study skills into STEMM teaching and learning.
    Project team lead – Elizabeth Yuriev, Pharmacy

The project teams represent eight faculties and two administrative divisions of Monash: Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences; Science; Information Technology; Engineering; Art, Design and Architecture; Law; Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences; School of Business; The Generator; and the Hargrave-Andrew Library.

Congratulations to the project teams!  In time, the Monash Education Academy look forward to sharing what the project teams learn with the Monash teaching and learning community - the outcomes, strategies and resources