MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH: JOINT PRACTICAL LESSONS IN THE STUDIES OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

In recent years, most graduates of computer science are working in most areas except the computer science itself. This highlights the deep nature of interdisciplinary that has the computer science. Therefore almost always computer science professionals must collaborate with other professionals from different areas. However, the training offered in computer science studies lacks that multidisciplinary, focusing more on purely technical aspects.
The campus, a place where studies of very different nature exist side by side, may constitute an excellent basis for conducting multidisciplinary training without underestimating higher education rigor. The aim of the universities is to train their students in the skills demanded by businesses and companies. According to experts, students need to develop more the skills called generic in which can be found the interpersonal skills.
This chapter presents a good example where computer studies and educational psychology find out a common ground and realistic working through laboratory practices.
Specifically, the work enables to students of computer science education the development of diagnosis support systems, with artificial intelligence techniques, that could be used by the specialists involved in the educational field from different perspectives. The applications developed by students of computer science is the creation of a model to aid for the diagnosis of pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), sometimes also commonly called autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and to enable communication between different professionals. The complexity of this diagnosis, not only by the exclusive characteristics of every person who suffer it but also by the large numbers of variables involved in it, requires a very strong and closed interdisciplinary participation. Moreover, for the enhancement of this software it has been required the creation of a working framework which involves doctors and families, as well as those students of computer science and educational psychology already mentioned. The final purpose of this diagnostic tool is its applicability in primary schools to increase early detection and diagnosis of suspicious signs of a conduct standard in the early years of development. That would enable the appropriate psychoeducational care for better adaptation to their educational and social environment.
Meanwhile, students of educational psychology incorporate their knowledge to adjust the computer application successfully, incorporating it the qualitative and quantitative information needed for verification. As a result of this synergy, a good interdisciplinary teamwork has emerged, closer to the real world than the university and which all would be enriched. Now is the time to match the needs that professional world requires college students. A world in which is sufficiently demonstrated that the proper evaluation and treatment education requires the participation of different professionals in order to provide particular views of behaviours to observe, modify and implement strategies for this purpose.
In this sense, this work demonstrates that it is possible to intervene in a curricular perspective, in the university, to promote the development of interpersonal skills. It can be shown, in this way, a methodology for interdisciplinary practices design and a guide for monitoring and evaluation.