Developing 21st Century Skills for a Sustainable future through Interdisciplinary Education

One key mission of universities is to equip young professionals with the attitudes, skills, and competencies needed to solve globally intertwined sustainability challenges affecting our time. Universities increasingly engage with the grand challenges of today, and one type of engagement is through experience-based courses providing students with the relevant competencies and skills to cope with complex and wicked problems. Yet, the educational design of such courses is not straightforward, and educators continuously question: How can we best help and prepare our students to cope and innovate in a rapidly shifting, complex and interconnected world?

When using wicked problems as a learning arena, educators will need new pedagogy to support students. Moreover, students will need both factual knowledge related to their discipline and certain key competencies and skills, often named 21st-century skills. These skills are normally acquired outside the traditional classroom, involving interdisciplinary interactions, real-life problems, and action-based teaching. Scholars emphasize competencies and skills, such as teamwork and collaboration, creativity and entrepreneurship, networking and learning with stakeholders, flexible mindsets, forward-looking, critical thinking, resilience, and problem-solving.

In Scandinavia, several higher education institutions and universities working with experienced-based and interdisciplinary learning have established The Nordic Experts in Teams Network funded by The Nordic Council of Ministers (Nordplus). Experts in Teams is a ‘method, practice or approach’ for developing interdisciplinary teamwork skills and other 21st century skills. The method strengthens the students’ transferable skills in interdisciplinary teamwork, innovation, and group dynamics. In the Experts in Teams courses, the students work in interdisciplinary teams. The frame is a real-life case from the public or private sector or a trade organization. The students develop interdisciplinary teamwork skills by reflecting on and learning from specific teamwork situations. Furthermore, they develop an understanding of how those skills scaffold the solution of complex and wicked problems.

At NTNU, the work methods in the Experts in Teamwork course have been developed over two decades and have for the last decade influenced the development of similar courses at other universities and higher education institutions, through a sharing network culture. The Experts in Teams (EiT) method has spread to other universities through creative local adaptation (‘no copy-paste’) and represents a fertile ground for innovative pedagogy and rich course formats.

In a joint 1,5 hour presentation and panel conversation, we aim to present and discuss aspects of implementing EiT in courses. We draw on the network partners' combined experience and exemplify with our courses. The workshop will evolve around, e.g., the following aspects of EiT: 1) challenges to implementing the ‘EiT’ course, 2) arguments for the course variant of EiT chosen, curriculum and pedagogies, 3) competence challenges for faculty, 4) Involvement with real-life, and 5) learning challenges and outcomes for students.