Assessment Outcomes and Forays in Interdisciplinary Curriculum Development

An interdisciplinary course titled Issues in Ecology and Environment was developed and taught by an anthropologist and an oceanographer at Florida Gulf Coast University beginning spring 1998. Focusing on cognate interdisciplinary competencies rather than diverging disciplinary content, this collaboration also yielded working definitions of several integrating learning outcomes—an ecological perspective being chief among these. As part of the course development, authentic assessments, cooperative group activities, and opportunities for experiential learning using ecosystems located on campus were developed. Post-assessment debriefings were used to solicit student feedback as part of a continuous improvement model for the course. By structuring the course to target learning outcomes that transcended disciplinary traditions, the instructors were able to look beyond disciplinary barriers toward a point of convergence and benefit from the new perspective.