Abstract:

Interdisciplinary problem solving is inherently ambiguous and complex, requiring learners to engage with and integrate information from multiple perspectives. These processes often involve reasoning through incomplete data or competing views, navigating different ways of knowing, and forming understandings of potentially unfamiliar frames of evidence and methods. Thus by nature, interdisciplinary forms of problem solving and collaboration requires developing and sustaining a tolerance for ambiguity– a key competency for interdisciplinary learning. In making sense of disciplinary sources and insights for a richer and more comprehensive understanding of the problem or topic, students may experience uncertainty. Navigating this uncertainty may also require students to engage in academic risk-taking behaviors as they interpret evidence, justify decisions, and commit to solutions where there is no clear or right answer or agreed upon methods. Despite the need for interdisciplinary approaches to solving complex problems in the 21st century, there is little research examining how students encounter and navigate complexity within authentic assessment contexts.

This exploratory case study examines undergraduate student experiences of complexity in an interdisciplinary studies course where they engaged with a scenario-based assessment focused on addressing high school dropout rates. Scenario-based assessments (SBAs) are designed to evaluate learners’ abilities to apply knowledge and skills in realistic contexts. Unlike traditional assessments that prioritize recall and correct answers, SBAs often present learners with complex, open-ended problems that require interpreting information, evaluating multiple explanations and perspectives, and constructing conclusions and responses with reasoning. During the assessment, students collaborate as interns for a hypothetical nonprofit organization working alongside agents in the SBA to analyze multiple sources, generate possible explanations for the issue, and develop an evidence-supported problem statement.

The study addresses three research questions:
(1) How do students navigate complexity in an interdisciplinary scenario-based assessment?
(2) Do students engage in academic risk-taking when reasoning through an open-ended problem?
(3) How do students reflect on their experiences of ambiguity and risk-taking after completing the scenario-based assessment?

Data includes logs of the student interactive conversations and responses from the SBA platform, their final written problem statements, and their post-assessment written reflections and was collected across two iterations of the SBA. An initial version was implemented in Spring 2025, followed by a revised version in Fall 2025 that incorporated insights and feedback from the first implementation. Using qualitative thematic analysis, this study will code students’ agent engagements and written responses to the assessment as well as their post-assessment reflections describing their experiences completing the task. When detecting and describing patterns of real-time complexity processing, risk-taking behaviors, and strategies for interpreting open-ended problems, student responses will be triangulated to identify behavioral and reflective patterns in their interdisciplinary reasoning. This study aims to provide implications for both instruction and designing SBAs that support effective interdisciplinary reasoning and foster tolerance for ambiguity.

Keywords:

Interdisciplinary Studies, Scenario-Based Assessment, Tolerance for Ambiguity, Processing Complexity.