Multidisciplinary teaching is a contemporary education strategy implemented by various tertiary institutions to stimulate students’ critical thinking, develop inter-disciplinary understanding, and enhance students’ problem solving skills. In this presentation, Dr Saad Odeh and Dr Muhammad Qureshi summarise the steps taken, as well as findings from a pilot study that investigated the development and implementation of a combined assignment from two first year units in the Engineering curriculum: “Foundation Mathematics” and “Introduction to Programming”. The suggested assignment aimed to help students understand the link between these two disciplines. Case studies from the mechanical and civil engineering industry were selected to develop the pilot assignments. The mathematical rules applied in this assignment were introduced in brief in the assignment information sheet to give students guidelines to carry out further online research. The preliminary statistical results show improvement in students’ multi-disciplinary knowledge in the different units and enhancement in their industrial experience.

1. Development of a multidisciplinary assignment | A first year
Engineering pilot study
Presented
by
Dr S. Odeh and Dr M. Qureshi
Other teachers participated in this work
J. Hayne

2. Background of the higher education provider involved in this study
The study was conducted at Sydney Institute of Business and Technology (SIBT) which is
part of global NAVITAS group. SIBT has been in operation since 1997 as a private higher
education provider in Sydney, offering enabling programs to local universities.
Curriculum development was undertaken during 2015 as a major initiative to re-
establish SIBT as a progressive provider that employed contemporary learning and
teaching principles.

3. Four major principles that help the preparation of students for successful transition to
university programs were used:
 Active learning: increasing interactivity to enhance student engagement,
• Technology-enabled learning, with engaging activities using various applications, and online tasks,
• Authentic learning, students are exposed to more realife and industrial problems,
 Personalised learning, with scaffolded tasks, revision and extension activities, building flipped
learning skills.

4. Contemporary approach to the curriculum integration
The international bureau of education (IBE-UNESCO) specified three major types of contemporary
approach to curriculum integration:
– Multidisciplinary, studying a topic from the viewpoint of more than one discipline.
– Interdisciplinary, understanding of theories that cut across disciplines.
– Transdisciplinary, integrating disciplines to construct a new context of real-world theme.
Multidisciplinary teaching is one of the contemporary education techniques currently introduced by
different tertiary institutions to stimulate,
– Students’ critical thinking,
– Develop discipline understanding,
– Enhance students’ problem solving skills.

5. The core work of this study
• Applying a combined assignment between two units of the 1st year of the
engineering curriculum in 4 academic sessions.
• The proposed multidisciplinary task integrates a mathematical element into
programing subroutine, giving mathematical concepts a context and relevance.

6. The aim of applying combined task
- Apply self-teaching,
- Develop practical skills,
- Introduce students to problem solving skills,
- Interaction and collaboration between academics

7. What is common between Programming and Mathematics
• Mathematics has inherent characteristics of programming.
• A common perception about programming is that it should be restricted to
computer science.
• Many topics are (e.g. variables and functions) are common in both subjects and can
be taught more practically using programming, enabling the students to generalize
problems.

8. The study approach – teachers involvement
Case studies from the mechanical and civil engineering industry were selected to develop the
pilot assignments.
In each of the 4 academic sessions students were given a real life problem to practice a
mathematical and programing principles.
Short information session was conducted to give information about the case study and define
the given problem.
Teachers mark the relevant part to their disciplinary area and combined mark is considered in
final grade of each unit.

9. Student contribution
- Students were guided to explore further the given mathematics principle
and do self-study about the topic.
- Students used their programing knowledge acquired during the session to
write a computer program to solve the mathematics principle.
- Students used the developed program to do finite calculation of the given
mathematics principle to solve the real life problem.

10. Example of a case study combined task
Evaluation of the surface area of the Jindabyne Reservoir

11. Evaluation of an aircraft wing area

12. The distribution of load on Nimons bridge
Built in 1890 and located at Ballarat – Victoria

13. Students’ Feedback
- Two surveys were conducted before and after each assignment to get feedback on
students’ satisfaction from both students cohort (IT unit and mathematics unit).
- The impact of having this type of Multidisciplinary work on students’ learning
process was identified. Different types of student’s skill were involved in this
survey:
Students have already studied the math unit and now are studying programing, or,
Students are studying programing in conjunction with maths unit, or,
Students are already studied programing and now are studying maths,
Students are studying maths without programing background.

14. Examples of survey questions
Post-Assignment Survey:
1) Were you able to apply the skills or knowledge of Mathematics to Programing for the real life problems in this assignment?
2) Was the assignment related to your field of study?
3) Did you find this combined assignment useful for improving your knowledge?
4) What is your level of understanding in using computer programming technology or software to calculate a close
approximation to the area under a given curve?
5) Did the assignment improve your level of understanding of the respective Mathematics rule?
6) What is your level of understanding of using programming in real life problems?
7) Did you search online about the topic studied in this assignment?
8) How would you rate the support provided by your lecturer/tutor in this assignment?

15. 0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
4.5
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Post assignment
Pre assignment
Answerscore
Question number
Example of Students’ survey results

16. Achieved Outcomes
• Apply self-teaching: this was achieved by guiding the students to the source of information they
needed to investigate and understand principles in mathematics and computer programming.
• Develop practical skills: students learnt how to apply theoretical mathematical skills on actual
engineering cases and use computer programming as a solution tool for gaining high accuracy in their
results.
• Introduce students to problem solving skills: this was achieved by analysing the assignment problem
and comparing the results achieved by hand calculation method and the developed computer code.
• Interaction and collaboration between academics of different disciplines to improve students’
performance.
• Improved student satisfaction

17. Thank you for your participation
Q & A
Further information found in the paper presented at FABENZ conference in 2018 :
http://fabenz.org.nz/resources/
My email: Saad.Odeh@sibt.nsw.edu.au