Leveraging mobile applications to promote humanities-STEM intersections

Abstract

Current trends in education encourage the development of students who are capable of bridging disciplines, integrating multiple modes, and adopting perspectives effectively. Despite this rhetorical appreciation of inter- and multidisciplinary training, academic distinctions persist. In particular, the division between the humanities and the STEM fields is evident in the ways these disciplines approach learning and knowledge. STEM fields tend to promote post-positivist ways of seeing the world while the humanities embrace interpretivist modes of thought. This paper examines a mobile application for vocabulary learning designed to integrate humanities- and science-related processes in an effort to offer multidisciplinary experiences for students. The main implications are that leveraging mobile technologies increases contextualized learning experiences for students, and facilitates the use of multiple disciplines to accomplish a goal. Important to creating an educational tool that incorporates humanistic and scientific knowledge and methods are creating communities of practice, facilitating user-generated content, and promoting of project-based learning.