Extended abstract
One of the remarkable features of innovative learning environments is solving complex, open-ended problems in collaborative teams of students from different disciplines and stakeholders from various backgrounds. Multidisciplinary teamwork is evidenced to have positive impacts on students’ skills development and learning of course content (e.g. Spelt et al. 2017). The functioning of multidisciplinary teams is primarily effected by; the learning environment the course curriculum, the problem or the challenge that the team is working on, course content and tasks, teacher behavior and guidance, team elements such as commitment, communication and organization, and individual factors such as personal characteristics and prior experiences (e.g. Almajed et al. 2016; Spelt et al. 2017). Multidisciplinary teamwork is a common practice of CBL courses. The team members are expected to: a) identify their own skills and knowledge and their own contributions to the project, b) interact with the team members to clarify their disciplinary contributions to the project, and c) appreciate and synthesize other disciplines’ knowledge in relation to the project outputs (Schaffer et al. 2012). Concerning multidisciplinary collaboration in CBL, the literature presents student satisfaction along with problems in team communication (e.g., Jensen et al. 2018; Romero-Yesa et al. 2023). This study aimed to explore students’ experiences in the CBL course, Dutch Dairy Challenge. More specifically, we investigated students’ experiences about multidisciplinary teamwork and CBL approach. The guiding research question was: “What are the perceptions and experiences of students about challenge-based learning and multidisciplinary teamwork in the context of the course ‘Dutch Dairy Challenge’. A qualitative case study approach was adopted, to gain a comprehensive picture of student experiences in the CBL course (Yin 2014). The two multidisciplinary teams with 10 students, whom we could collect data from, constituted the sample of this research. ). In this specific course, the following question was posed: “How can dairy farms still exist in the future, in a healthy, sustainable and economically feasible way?” In working on this challenge, the proposed solutions could take the form of a prototype (e.g. a device, platform, tool), a system or a policy, depending on the expertise of the team and their chosen direction. In a 100-day period, students were challenged to redefine this broad challenge to a more specific problem definition, propose a solution to this problem and validate their proposal. Upon receiving the approval letter from the Ethics Committee, we collected signed informed consent forms from the 10 students. The data included students’ final reflections on group work and collaboration, and on learning in a CBL course. The qualitative data was analyzed following a content analysis that involved: “…coding, categorizing (creating meaningful categories into which the units of analysis – words, phrases, sentences etc. – can be placed), comparing (categories and making links between them), and concluding– drawing theoretical conclusions from the text” (Cohen et al. 2007, p. 476; 2017). Overall, the findings indicated students’ ‘positive reactions to working as a multidisciplinary team’. The identified sub-categories were ‘team structure’, and the ‘open-space’ that allowed for different opinions. For team structure, the students referred to assigning members with roles to bring organization and efficiency to the team e.g., chair, reporter. An illustrative comment was: “The role that I have in the group is to “see” the big picture and make sure the work is going into the right direction”. Implementing the Belbin roles was appreciated by the students. Secondly, they stressed the importance of meaningful task identification and task division. One student reported: “All team members have a role in the team to make sure that everyone can do their own thing and can learn something from a team role.” Concerning open-space, the students persistently highlighted the positive contribution of the team environment that fostered being expressive and sharing their prior professional experiences. The students indicated they ‘learnt about the challenge-based learning pedagogy’ by taking this course; what CBL entails and how it is practiced. It was reported that this was possible through, for example, personal study, e.g.: “I want to learn more about the education method (refers to CBL) and how I react on this. I already started with searching for some papers about these methods. I searched for papers from the different universities, so I also have different perspectives from different institutions. The students also shared their positive experiences concerning the ‘connection to real-life context’. The students indicated that they very much enjoyed and benefitted from ‘communication with the external stakeholders’. According to the students, this allowed for focusing on the end user and constantly discussing for improvement of ideas. Two example comments are: “Especially in the final phase of the project, we spent a lot of time introducing the prototype to stakeholders” and “We discussed our subject with a lot of stakeholders, and that gave our project also more quality”. The findings confirmed previous studies on the general positive reactions towards multidisciplinary collaboration in CBL courses (e.g., Huesca et al. 2024). The importance of organization, clarity on remember roles and task division were also noticed in our previous research that investigated multidisciplinary teamwork of physics and mechanical engineering students in a CBL course (Author et al. 2022). The positive reactions towards the open-endedness and autonomy might be associated with the open experiences CBL offers in tackling and experimenting with ideas, and in considering interests and options (Huesca et al. 2024; Romero-Yesa et al. 2023). Results regarding experiences with CBL also resonated well with our previous work on perceived usefulness of a CBL course on robot arm optimization. Results of this former study had shown that the students perceived the course with regards to: a) involvement of a stakeholder, hands-on nature, and b) gaining professional qualities connected to real-life (Author, 2022).
