Abstract:

Today’s challenges encourage teachers and researchers to push past their comfort zone and partner with colleagues from other departments to create a vehicle for students to gain and embrace different perspectives. Our goal when creating a cross-disciplinary path to learning was to combine disciplinary breadth, collaboration, technology, and an authentic experience for our students to learn from one another, think critically, and together synthesize expertise from background experiences and disciplinary perspectives.

Merging two disciplines, Instructional Design for Teaching and Learning (Education) and Social Entrepreneurship (Business), we implemented a problem-based, cross-disciplinary approach to learning by challenging students to choose one of the first four United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):
1) No Poverty,
2) Zero Hunger,
3) Good Health and Well-Being, and
4) Quality Education, identify an issue within the realm, and a technological solution.

The journey began with a common reading, Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to your Soul’s Purpose. The book, written as a traditional narrative, offers anecdotes and philosophies and encourages students to live in the present moment. Tolle reveals how transcending our ego-based state of consciousness is essential to personal happiness and necessary to ending conflict and suffering throughout the world.

Through literature circles, students were encouraged to hone in on and reflect on their offerings to the group. This cross-disciplinary approach proved to be an integrative and transformative experience. Students were asked to make connections via text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world, and brought together to address a common problem or issue. Sustainable entrepreneurial practices were taught to support students in encompassing the triple bottom line, or sustainable practices, putting people, the planet, and prosperity at the forefront of all decision-making.

Students completed an online innovation assessment to learn about their unique strengths and how to accelerate them, learn to optimize interactions with team members, and realize their potential. This assessment proved valuable for working in cohesive groups as each student was provided individualized tips based on their assessment on how to best work with members of a team.

We used the four stages (preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification) of creative thinking from the book, The Art of Thought by Graham Wallas. Students worked collaboratively to define a problem and gather pertinent information. Giving time for incubation allowed time for students to process the information. During the illumination stage, solutions emerge. Once the creative solution surfaced, students used critical thinking to fine-tune their ideas.

The effect; our students came together and offered helpful solutions to their identified 21st-century world problems by creating things such as WebQuests, informational and motivational blogs, interactive webpages, educational games created via coding, and other platforms.

Our next step in this pedagogical initiative is to unite the disciplines to enrich and broaden student learning via study abroad. This cross-disciplinary learning experience will be framed by the demands of global challenges rather than more localized ones.

Keywords:

Pedagogical Innovations, Critical Thinking, Creativity, Technology, 21st Century Skills, Entrepreneurship Education, Curriculum Design, Multidisciplinary.