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Transdisciplinary Collaborations for Creative Futures

Module description

Within this module you will learn with staff and students from across the University, collaborating beyond traditional academic boundaries in a transdisciplinary way where disciplines serve the issue in hand, rather than serving each other. You will work in transdisciplinary teams to explore complex social, educational and ethical issues facilitated through a combination of Creative Pedagogies and Design Thinking. You will be encouraged to collaboratively, and critically, produce original ideas, and think innovatively about the future through research-based activities, fieldwork and creative workshops that blend the arts, sciences, social sciences, humanities and business. Using appropriately innovative assessment techniques, the module will equip you to respond to the global complexity and uncertainty that you will inevitably encounter when you graduate.

There are no pre-requisite or co-requisite modules; it is suitable for M-level students from across the University, including interdisciplinary pathways.

Module aims - intentions of the module

• To develop knowledge and understanding of the theory and practice of transdisciplinary collaborative approaches;
• To support students’ creative confidence and critical thinking by exploring the relationship between contemporary society and the disciplines of sciences, social sciences, arts, humanities and business.
• To provide students with the opportunity to learn how to address complex social, ethical and educational challenges
• To develop knowledge and understanding of creativity and futures thinking approaches

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of how to address complex contemporary issues through collaboration
• 2. Apply futures thinking individually, collaboratively and communally to social, educational and ethical issues
• 3. Demonstrate creative approaches which forefront dialogic engagement
• 4. Demonstrate understanding of how to work in diverse teams with and without guidance

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Identify the meaning of transdisciplinarity and how to apply this in practice
• 6. Demonstrate understanding of the relationship between contemporary society and the disciplines of sciences, social sciences, arts, humanities and business

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 7. Collaborate and communicate creatively, critically and ethically
• 8. Reflect on creative and futures approaches before, during and after being involved in them
• 9. Communicate a final idea/design concept/art project/innovative solution through a visual, virtual, and/or tangible manifestation or other mediums (this includes: short fiction, policy, performance, art installation, citizen science idea, community engagement activity, etc.)

Syllabus plan

Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following:

• Introduction to the theory and practice of transdisciplinary learning and research, in preparation for collaborative, transdisciplinary learning experiences
• An intensive creative and futures-focused experience structured around facilitated and independent transdisciplinary group work focused on responding to a key societal challenge, likely to be across a one or two week period
• This may include fieldwork, taught sessions, facilitated challenge-based learning drawing on the sciences, social sciences, arts, humanities and business
• Culmination in a sharing/presentation of student group outcomes
• Reflection on and discussion of the ethicality of issues and responses

Independent, collaborative and peer to peer learning is continually encouraged. The module staff are well-connected to regional and international specialists and practitioners and the module usually includes connections to them.

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Burke, P. J. (2015). “Re/Imagining Higher Education Pedagogies: Gender, Emotion and Difference.” Teaching in Higher Education 20 (4): 388–401. doi:10.1080/09540253.2017.1308471.
• Guyotte, K., Sochacka, N., Costantino, T. Walther, J., Kellam, N. (2014), STEAM as social practice: Cultivating creativity in transdisciplinary spaces Art Education, 67 (6)  pp. 12-19
• Ingold, T. (2013).  Making. Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Abingdon-on-Thame: Routledge.
• Kara, H. (2015). Creative methods in the social sciences: A practical guide Policy Press, Bristol.
• Lattuca, L. (2001). Creating interdisciplinarity: Interdisciplinary research and teaching among college and university faculty Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville.
• Lee, J. S., S. Blackwell, J. Drake, and K. A. Moran. (2013). “Taking a Leap of Faith: Redefining Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Through Project-Based Learning.” Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning 8 (2): 19–34. doi:10.7771/1541-5015.1426.
• Morgan, N. (2000). Notions of transdisciplinarity Transdisciplinarity: Recreating integrated knowledge, EOLSS, Oxford, pp. 38-41
• Taylor, C., and A. Bayley. (2019). Posthumanism and Higher Education: Reimagining Pedagogy, Practice and Research. Cham, CH: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Glaveanu, V. Sierra, Z., Tanggaard, L. (2015). Widening our understanding of creative pedagogy: A North-South dialogue Education 3–13, 43 (4) pp. 360-370

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• Somerville, M. & Rapport, D. (2000). Transdisciplinarity: reCreating Integrated Knowledge. McGill-Queen's University Press
• Benatar, S. (2000).  Perspectives from physicians and medical scientists. In  M.A. Somerville &  D.J. Rapport (Eds.),  Transdisciplinarity: reCreating integrated knowledge (pp.  171–192). Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen's University Press Available from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7zw15.12.
• Chappell, K. Witt, S. and Wren, H. Hampton, L., Swinford, L., Woods, P. and Hampton, M. (2023). Re-creating Higher Education pedagogy by making materiality and spatiality matter. Invited contribution to Special Issue of Journal of Creative Behaviour: Beyond Western Notions of Creativity in Education. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jocb.619
• Cook, V., Major, L., Warwick, P., & Vrikki, M. (2020). Developing collaborative creativity through microblogging: A material-dialogic approach. Thinking Skills and Creativity,  37, 100685; doi: 10.1016/j.tsc.2020.100685.
• Kassam, K. (2021). Transdisciplinary research, Indigenous knowledge, and wicked problems. Rangelands,  43(4),  133–141; doi: 10.1016/j.rala.2021.04.002.
• Khoo, S.M. (2017). Sustainable knowledge transformation in and through higher education: A case for transdisciplinary leadership. International Journal of Development Education and Global Learning, 8(3),  5–24; doi: 10.18546/ijdegl.8.3.02.
• Lather, P. (2013). Methodology-21: what do we do in the afterward? International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26 (6) p. 634645, 10.1080/09518398.2013.788753

Key words search

Transdisciplinary, creativity, futures, collaborative