Vertically integrated multidisciplinary teaming: an instructional framework adapted to a nonengineering course

We present a case study of the use of vertically integrated multidisciplinary teams in a nonengineering general science course. We constructed our teams from students with different majors, genders, and class ranks, reflecting several of the ingredients for effective teaming discussed in the literature. This type of multidisciplinary and stratified team member distribution helped to build a sense of community and shared ownership in the learning process. Our experience demonstrates that vertically integrated teaming concepts can be successfully adapted as an instructional framework in multidisciplinary general-audience courses. In this paper, we discuss content analyses of student journal entries, self-reflection reports, and survey responses.