Four considerations on interdisciplinary learning at the boundaries of human and engineering sciences [original]

TYPE Opinion

PUBLISHED 07 December 2022

DOI 10.3389/feduc.2022.1096111

OPEN ACCESS

EDITED BY

Kostas Nizamis,

University of Twente, Netherlands

REVIEWED BY

Pinaki Chakraborty,

Netaji Subhas University of

Technology, India

*CORRESPONDENCE

Philipp Beckerle

[email protected]

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Frontiers in Education

RECEIVED 11 November 2022

ACCEPTED 25 November 2022

PUBLISHED 07 December 2022

CITATION

Beckerle P, Hao C, Haeuﬂe DFB and

Russwinkel N (2022) Four

considerations on interdisciplinary

learning at the boundaries of human

and engineering sciences.

Front. Educ. 7:1096111.

doi: 10.3389/feduc.2022.1096111

Russwinkel. This is an open-access

article distributed under the terms of

the Creative Commons Attribution

License (CC BY). The use, distribution

or reproduction in other forums is

permitted, provided the original

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practice. No use, distribution or

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not comply with these terms.

Four considerations on

interdisciplinary learning at the

boundaries of human and

engineering sciences

Philipp Beckerle1,2*, Chenxu Hao1, Daniel F. B. Haeuﬂe3,4 and

Nele Russwinkel5

1Chair of Autonomous Systems and Mechatronics, Department of Electrical Engineering,

Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany, 2Department of Artiﬁcial

Intelligence in Biomedical Engineering, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg,

Erlangen, Germany, 3Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research and Center for Integrative

Neuroscience, University of Tübingen, Tubingen, Germany, 4Institute for Modelling and Simulation

of Biomechanical Systems, Computational Biophysics and Biorobotics, University of Stuttgart,

Stuttgart, Germany, 5Cognitive Modeling in Dynamic Human-Machine Systems, Technical University

of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

KEYWORDS

interdisciplinary learning, teaching evaluation, human-robot interaction, human

sciences, engineering sciences

1. Introduction

Learning interdisciplinary matters requires to adapt (previous) knowledge and to

align one’s own capacities to the current educational task (Ivanitskaya et al., 2002). This

becomes particularly challenging in fields of study that are strongly interdisciplinary,

e.g., at the boundary of human and engineering sciences. In this position paper, we

put forward four considerations based on our teaching experiences in the context of

human-robot interaction (Siciliano et al., 2008;Bartneck et al., 2020) and stimulated

by university didactic training. We root our position on teaching experience from six

German universities.

Namely, we recommend putting emphasis on communication, interaction, blending

teaching methods, and providing students with orientation. Results from student

evaluations of interdisciplinary courses with participants from different study programs

are provided to give a practical perspective on these four considerations.

2. Four considerations

To develop common ground for interdisciplinary learning, it is important to specify

and comprehend different learning objectives, i.e., what engineering students should

know about human-related considerations and what human science students should

know about technology. While we develop our four considerations from our overall

experience, we substantiate our opinions with results from curricular evaluations of the

students attending our courses. Particularly, we analyzed the open item responses of the

following evaluations:

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Beckerle et al. 10.3389/feduc.2022.1096111

•Computational Motor Control (Summer term 2019 and

2020, N=27. M.Sc. in neuroscience and computer science.

University of Tübingen, Germany).

•Biorobotics (Summer term 2020 and 2021, N=40.

M.Sc. in biomedical engineering, computer science, and

related programs. University of Tübingen and University

of Stuttgart, Germany).

•Human-centered Robotics (Winter term 2021, N=

13. M.Sc. in electrical and robotic engineering. TU

Dortmund, Germany).

•Human-Mechatronics Systems (Winter term 2021, N=

23. M.Sc. in mechancial and eletrical engineering. TU

Darmstadt, Germany).

•Human-centered Mechatronics and Robotics (Summer

term 2021, N=15, M.Sc. in electrical, mechatronic, and

medical engineering, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany).

•Introduction to Cognitive Modeling (Summer term 2022,

N=14. M.Sc. in Human Factors. TU Berlin, Germany).

•Applied Cognitive Modeling (Winter term 2021, N=10.

M.Sc. in Human Factors. TU Berlin, Germany).

Considering human-robot interaction, engineering students

need to learn biomechanical and psychological topics beyond

technical aspects, e.g., biomechanical signals and models (Burdet

et al., 2013) or empirical study designs (Gravetter and Forzano,

2018). In contrast to that, students of the human sciences

require a certain level of technical knowledge, e.g., how to

mechanically design a prosthesis and how to implement a

controller to best match neuro-muscular properties (Eilenberg

et al., 2010) or which signals can be used to interface between

the human and the robot (Soekadar et al., 2015;Sharbafi et al.,

2020). Furthermore, students need to understand why the other

disciplines are important to the field, e.g., potentials or issues

arising if one perspective would or would not be taken into

account, and how they approach challenges, e.g., social robotics

considering humans’ expectations toward a robot. Through that,

students can become aware of what would be missing when

limiting research to a single discipline and how interdisciplinary

approaches provided added value by extending perspectives, e.g.,

matching users’ needs in technical design. Discipline-specific

learning objectives provide a frame for our four considerations

that outlined in Figure 1 and particularized below.

2.1. Communication

Practical insights from the authors’ teaching and research

show that Communication is a key aspect: simple questions

like "What is a model?" may have very different answers

in different branches of science. Therefore, collecting those

definitions and determining a clear terminology for a given topic

is a crucial step at the beginning of a course. A continuous

discussion of terminology helps the students to understand

perspectives of the other disciplines and thereby developing a

better understanding of the interdisciplinary field as a whole.

This is supported by a student’s evaluation comment: "I learned

a lot preparing the papers. They helped tremendously putting

everything into context." Integrating students from different

backgrounds while considering knowledge uncertainties can

further be fostered by using tangible examples, e.g., social

robots in elderly care, collaborative robots supporting workers,

or science-fiction companion robots, as is supported by the

students liking “examples from instructors own experiences.”

2.2. Interaction

If both, students and lecturers are aware of the different

learning goals, they can Interactively develop guiding questions

for the course, e.g., “How can we predict the users’ intentions?”

or “When is the system/study considered successful?.” Interactive

project tasks and discussions in small groups help students not

only to comprehend the topic holistically but also to develop a

joint understanding. Evaluating our courses, students fed back

that “It’s very great to make as much effort to make the course

interactive, even if there are a few answers from the student.”

Besides their self-critical view, they also suggest: “Maybe having

more links between the seminars and the course could help

to be more interactive in the class.” Therefore, we recommend

jointly creating concept maps (Novak, 1990;Ivanitskaya et al.,

2002) to structure the content of the interdisciplinary matter by

linking concepts. Applying this promising interactive measure,

we asked students to watch a recorded video by the lecturer

and actively analyze the topic (reading related publications,

searching important terms on the internet). Subsequently, the

students were discussing the information and jointly condensed

it into a 1-page concept map, which enabled them report their

findings very accurately and concisely. In evaluation, students

acknowledged that “the exam [...] in the form of an essay

and a concept map, [allows to] explain your knowledge much

better.” Furthermore, students stated to enjoy discussions about

differing perspectives even if there is no definite answer.

Generally, flip-the-classroom methods seem promising as

students report them to “get us involved more in the lecture.”

These methods can further be extended by asking students

to assume different roles to broaden their perspectives on

requirements and challenges to be considered, e.g., view point

of elderly users or a nurse using an assistive robotic system.

2.3. Blending

Accordingly, interaction can further be promoted by

Blending teaching approaches to integrate interdisciplinary

knowledge, e.g., we use seminar-style discussions for human-

centered research while we apply calculation/practical tutorials

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Beckerle et al. 10.3389/feduc.2022.1096111

Interdisciplinary

Learning

Interac on

Orienta onBlending

Communica on

Course: jointly develop guiding

ques ons and create concept

maps

Students: comprehend the topic

holis!cally and develop a joint

understanding

Course: develop topics from an

overall view towards details

before wrapping up globally

Students: understand

interconnec!ons and might

iden!fy further subjects to study

Course: combine seminar-style

discussions and

calcula on/prac cal tutorials

Students: improve their

theore!cal and prac!cal

understanding by own ac!ons

Course: deﬁning and discussing a

clear terminology

Students: understand

perspec!ves of other disciplines

and the interdisciplinary ﬁeld

FIGURE 1

We propose emphasis on developing joint communication, promoting interaction, blending teaching elements, and proving students with

orientation to improve their interdisciplinary learning. The yellow boxes suggest concrete actions that could be taken for implementation, which

are describe in more detail in the text.

for engineering aspects. Both approaches can even be integrated

in small-scale projects where students are asked to analyze and

solve a human-centered design task as a team. The usefulness

of such projects is substantiated by students reporting that

“having small projects is way more “natural” than a lecture

where we would be asked about theoretical aspects. Receiving

sources and learning on our own is a very cool approach to

conveying knowledge,” particularly topics that involve hand-on

projects. Yet, theoretical aspects can also benefit from blending

as becomes obvious in responses like “The idea of offering

a seminar in addition to the lecture that puts the contents

of the lecture into practice [was good].” or “The course is a

good mix of knowledge transfer and discussion.” Moreover,

students verbally mentioned that only through the project they

“gained real understanding” about the theoretical knowledge

obtained earlier.

2.4. Orientation

To convey how those methods synergistically connect

in the considered interdisciplinary matter, we postulate to

provide Orientation to the students by outlining and elaborating

interconnections through the structure of the course: a human-

robot interaction course for instance might develop topics from

an overall view toward the human and then the robot perspective

before wrapping up globally again. However, interdisciplinary

courses will always face a compromise of broadness and depth.

Students accordingly state “it is always more helpful to get a

broad overview and just dive into one or two topics deeply”

or, oppositely, that “new content would need to be elaborated a

bit more in order to understand it in the long run.” However,

they might also identify further subjects to study from such

experiences. In advanced courses, providing a few striking

research articles could contribute to strengthen the orientation

in addition to the previously mentioned concept maps.

3. Discussion

Remarkably, our four considerations can reinforce each

other. Seminar elements increase interactions compared to

frontal lectures and can further help the students to gain

orientation. Similarly, promoting interaction and providing

orientation can push developing a joint communication

basis. One straightforward approach for implementation

that we applied successfully is flipping the classroom in the

end of frontal lecture sessions to interactively summarize

the key take home messages. By that students are not only

triggered to recapture the content but also to verbalize

and discuss the main topics. Some students seem to doubt

their interdisciplinary capabilities expecting that they

need to know everything. Hence, making them aware that

knowing how to methodically connect approaches from

different fields as well as comprehending and considering

knowledge of an expert from the other field are main

learning objectives.

Besides the four considerations, we see a high potential

in not only applying those in existing seminars or lectures,

but molding them into teaching projects, which convey

the interdisciplinary challenges when working on a practical

issue. Past studies have already shown that engineering

students benefit from course projects that connect theoretical

knowledge with real-world problems, as such projects can help

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Beckerle et al. 10.3389/feduc.2022.1096111

prepare them for working in the industry as well (Chang

et al., 2022;Fan et al., 2022). In addition to designing and

working on projects aiming at solving real-world problems,

students also need to be prepared for teamwork and technical

communication (Mihret Dessie et al., 2022). Similar to the

considerations themselves, this is underlined by student

evaluations, e.g., “the idea of doing [a project] is great”),

which also show the challenges of such approaches. e.g.,

temporal constraints: “short time frame of the project.” To

this end, classical exercise slots can be re-used to implement

team projects, as we for instance did to make students

explore how to succeed (and fail) as a team working on an

engineering task.

Although focusing on human-robot interaction and

the boundary of human and engineering sciences, we

believe that other interdisciplinary fields will benefit from

our considerations.

Author contributions

PB conceptualized the article and coordinated its

development as well as the integration of individual

contributions. All authors contributed the content,

opinions, and references as well as discussed and revised

the manuscript.

Funding

This research was supported by the Volkswagen

Foundation (Az. 9B 007).

Acknowledgments

The authors thank their students for feeding back their

opinions in the teaching evaluations.

Conﬂict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the

absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could

be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the

authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated

organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the

reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or

claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed

or endorsed by the publisher.

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