Requirement-based teaching in interdisciplinary graduate courses: Student perceptions and achievement

Abstract

The teaching in interdisciplinary graduate courses has to face many challenges, such as the wide contents, the various backgrounds of students and the different professional basis. Here, we presented a requirement-based teaching method for interdisciplinary graduate courses and practiced in two professional courses for four years at the School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering in Beihang University. The main idea of this method was to combine the course teaching and degree program requirement of each student, which largely inspired the learning enthusiasm and made the students change from ‘let me study’, ‘I want to study’ to ‘study what I want’. The results showed that this teaching method improved the comprehensive abilities of students and accelerated the publication of professional paper in their graduate stages.