Abstract:

Interdisciplinarity is defined as the interaction among different disciplines, in order to reach a shared goal consisting of knowledge improvement through dialog and collaboration, thus interdisciplinarity would help making progress in students` cooperative learning. Although interdisciplinarity is a reality in daily work, its implementation and development in Higher Education remains as a challenge. The aim of the present study is to present an experience of interdisciplinary training with university students and its relation with cooperative learning. 287 university students from Primary Education, Social Education and Psychology degrees in their first, second or third year at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) took part. Case study as methodology and a student with education needs were employed with participants who were organized in interdisciplinary groups and analyzed and solved it from an interdisciplinary view. Differences in the learning process focusing in cooperative learning were analyzed through a pre- vs. post-test design and a scale by Fernandez-Rio, Cecchini, Méndez-Giménez, Méndez-Alonso & Prieto (2017) was administered as an index of cooperative learning. Results showed that scores in the scale were significantly different before and after, with higher scores in cooperative learning after taking the course. Therefore, the case study from an interdisciplinary view involves an improvement in university students’ learning process in Higher Education.

Keywords:

Interdisciplinarity, case study methodology, cooperative learning, Higher Education.