Abstract:

Nowadays, Higher Education is based on disciplinary approaches and programmes, despite of an increasing shift to interdisciplinary teamwork since the last 20 years (Klaassen, 2018). Following this approach, graduate students are being engaged within new challenges of information and knowledge era, acquiring the skills they need to be successful in the competitive marketplace of 21st century (Kivunja, 2014). There are crucial skills to face 21st century challenges, as the critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration and team building, creativity and innovation (P21, 2012). At higher education level, these skills are deeply aligned with interdisciplinarity, defined as “a mean of solving problems and answering questions that cannot be satisfactorily addressed using single methods or approaches” (Klein, 1990). As we are facing even more complex challenges, the adoption of interdisciplinary approaches is becoming the best solution to face them (de Souza Marins, Ramos, Ferreira, Costa & Costa, 2019).

According to Kolmos, Hadgaft, & Holgaard (2016), there are three learning modes to universities consider: the academic mode, aiming knowledge and theory education; the market-driven innovation mode, focusing employability; and, the hybrid learning and responsibility mode, aiming critical consciousness regarding the sustainability development goals. Interdisciplinary competence addresses all these three modes. The research conducted by Damron-Martinez & Jackson (2017) states that the experiential learning exercise allows students to get in touch with real use cases while learning, representing a big shift from the typical classroom experience, for both the professor and the students.

This paper aims to demonstrate the importance of adopting an interdisciplinary approach in the 1st year of a higher education degree. It also intent to understand the student’s expectations about the interdisciplinary project methodology, focused in teaching-learning process, skills development and knowledge acquisition.

The interdisciplinary project, subject to research, aims to involve students within a work experience involving five different courses (Marketing, Business Economics, Descriptive Statistics, Consumer Behavior, Marketing and Consumption Laboratory A), applying their programmatical contents in an integrated way. The project topic that students are challenged to work is the analysis and characterization of a specific market and the consumers profile.

To achieve the main goal of this paper, the research process has been planned as follows. Earlier, a literature review on interdisciplinarity, project based learning and higher education students’ skills was conducted. Then, at the beginning of the interdisciplinary project (March 2020), a study will be carried out using a quantitative methodology, collecting data through a questionnaire adapted from Costa, Ferreira, Barata, Viterbo, Rodrigues and Magalhães (2019). The study will be conducted involving all the students enrolled on the 1st academic year of 2019/2020, who will participate in the interdisciplinary project (245 students). The questionnaire will address students' expectations regarding interdisciplinary approach, focusing on the teaching-learning process, skills development and knowledge acquisition.

The main contribution of this paper is to find out the skills and the importance given by students to skills development in an interdisciplinary project context.

Keywords:

Interdisciplinary approach, skills, higher education, marketing.