I intend to complete an Interdisciplinary Studies B.A. degree, with a concentration in "Health Ethnography", for this component of the program. My coursework at the end of SP17 includes:
INDS 330: Ways of Knowing (Introductory Course, Writing Intensive)
INDS 335: Degree Plan Design Seminar
INDS 480: Capstone Project Seminar
INDS 490H: Capstone Project Independent Study
This experience connects to my selected Grand Challenge, because my degree is, in fact, an example of personalized learning. By completing this degree, I will learn interdisciplinary strategies and techniques to address conflicts in the area of personalized learning.
Grand Challenge: Advance Personalized Learning Experience Level: Gold
Personal Reflection: The INDS degree provided me an in-depth exposure to the field of interdisciplinarity. I was introduced to interdisciplinary ways of thinking, literature, and practical applications. I learned about my ability to simplify and tackle complex, interdisciplinary issues. This degree allowed me to exercise my creativity to research/real-world problems. It broadened my perspective on how inter-related real world problems can be and the need for input for multiple disciplinary stakeholders.
Program-Wide Learning Objectives
Integrity - worked with IRB to approve Capstone project
Perspectivism - broadened perspective of my INDS concentration - health ethnography
Realistic Vision - courses taught me that not all problems have a simple, quick solution. However, we can tackle the problem little by little.
Teamwork - worked with stakeholders from multiple disciplines (INDS 399, INDS 480, INDS 490H)
Persistence - worked hard to get my INDS degree approved by committee and complete my INDS degree admist many obstacles
Flexibility - learned to be flexible with my mentors and other stakeholders during the Capstone process
Interdisciplinarity Learning Objective
Identify different disciplines that contribute to solution of complex problem - For my Capstone project, the disciplines involved are "serious games" and "medical anthropology"
Common Ground - the strategy of organization is important. Organization is a technique used to “bring out a relationship” between concepts (Repko, 2012). For a complex problem like advanced personalized learning, it is important to outline the cultural, technological, societal, and psychological threads of the problem. By organizing this problem, usually done by concept-mapping by interdisciplinarians, one can find angles to attack this problem. In my degree, I understood how cultural factors must be considered in personalizing learning. Therefore, through my INDS degree, I developed a tool to understand cultural factors affecting how students perceive cardiovascular disease. With this understanding, we can develop tools to personalize their learning.
Bridging Strategies - my degree “advances” personalized learning through the lens of medical anthropology and health education. The relevant integrative strategy here is “bridging the explanation-action gap” (Miller and Boix Mansilla, 2004), where medical anthropology serves as an explanation for the problem at hand (i.e. cultural differences in understanding/learning) and health education is the “action step”, or implementation for what to do with such understanding.