GoodWork Paper 33: Assessing Student Work at Disciplinary Crossroads (PDF)

Author(s): Veronica Boix Mansilla

Editor(s): Jeff Solomon, Series Editor

Media: PDF

Description: Adequately assessing student learning in higher education remains more a matter of collective hope than one of convergent and well-tested practice. The issue is marred by controversies over the purposes, methods, and most importantly, the very content of such assessment. Lack of clarity about indicators of quality is particularly evident in the assessment of student interdisciplinary work—where both the nature of interdisciplinary understanding and its assessment remain insufficiently defined. What does it mean to understand an issue in depth in an interdisciplinary way? How is it different from deep disciplinary understanding or a superficial merging of viewpoints? A clear articulation of what counts as quality interdisciplinary work and how such quality might be measured is needed if our academic institutions are to foster in students deep understanding of complex problems and evaluate the impact of interdisciplinary education initiatives. In this article, I put forth a definition of interdisciplinary understanding and a framework to inform our assessment of student interdisciplinary work. The arguments I present stem from an empirical study of interdisciplinary research and educational practices in well-recognized research centers and educational programs such as (but not limited to) the Media Lab at MIT, the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, and Human Biology Program at Stanford University.