Interdisciplinary Projects Help Fulfil Psychological Needs Of University Students
This poster was completed for STEM Instructional Program 18-19 and was presented at Fall Convocation 2019.
Abstract
Every scientific discipline is based on a specific body of concepts and presumptions. These concepts are crucial for understanding the design and implications of a situation.Therefore, it is believed that an interdisciplinary approach to research projects will help in generating a successful change to encourage an evolution in higher learning at University level.
Student retention can be increased by introducing interdisciplinary study projects which may involve students from the engineering, economics, social, history, language and/or human sciences departments. This is done to increase the basic psychological needs of the students in helping promote the academic engagement. Such projects can contribute to overall improvement in the higher education department, as they fulfil the psychological requirements of the students and satisfy their need for academic engagement and increase them in relatedness, competence and autonomy.
Real life project teams are predominantly interdisciplinary. In order to organizing a model with a similar aspect, a lot of organizational work and co-operation is needed between teachers of the different disciplines and courses and the time to prepare the projects for future evaluation and studies (1).