Comparing academic staff and student perspectives of an interdisciplinary design course

Since the turn of this century, engineering programs in Australia and the United States have been motivated by accrediting bodies such as IEAust and ABET to include multidisciplinary teaming in their curriculum. Yet, the reality of teaching interdisciplinary teaming requires both instructors and students to navigate institutional and social structures of engineering programs that are neither flexible nor adaptive. Drawing from multiple data sets, we present a case study of one interdisciplinary design course from the points of view of instructors and students. While the instructors prioritized flexibility to allow students to develop their own objectives for the project, many students desired more guidance. Nonetheless, many examples of successful interdisciplinary learning and appreciating the expertise of other disciplines occurred.