Increasing Willingness to Engage in Interdisciplinary Cooperation Through Creative Agitation

Abstract

Interdisciplinary learning enables students to discuss problems and generate creative solutions in a flexible and comprehensive manner. A trend towards more interdisciplinary courses and departments exists in higher education. The use of creative design methods can help people generate many ideas. Interdisciplinary groups can generate innovative solutions through creative design methods by applying knowledge from different fields. According to past teaching experience, when engaging in group work, students were generally willing to cooperate with classmates from different departments. However, when facing the stress of final assignments, they tended to form groups with students from the same department rather than engage in interdisciplinary cooperation. In this study, the students were placed into interdisciplinary groups for the following activities: labeling (visual department labels), taking turns to be group leaders, introducing departments, setting propositions, and giving instant feedback. This increased students' interaction with other students. Students' interdisciplinary awareness was improved through practice drills. After engaging in group work, they no longer resisted interdisciplinary cooperation but were willing to engage in interdisciplinary activities, which increased creative output. The results revealed that intentional interdisciplinary grouping can (1) increase willingness to engage in interdisciplinary cooperation, increase satisfaction with teamwork, and (3) improve learning effectiveness.