Work in progress — Measuring cross-disciplinary team learning in undergraduate project teams

This work-in-progress study reports current research on a project funded by the National Science Foundation. The goal of the project is to develop and validate measures of cross-disciplinary learning in undergraduate project teams. The current study was carried out in a multidisciplinary, project-based, service learning program in a Midwest land-grant university. The research team developed four major learning objectives for cross-disciplinary team learning (CDTL) based on a theory-driven framework for CDTL. The purpose of the study is to better understand students' self-efficacy for four CDTL objectives developed for project-based design team environments. Initial survey measures of pre-post project confidence levels across these dimensions have been developed and piloted in Fall '09 semester and all partner programs have been invited to pilot these measures in the Spring '10 semester. Preliminary data shows that students' understanding of cross-disciplinary team learning was influenced by their prior experience working on multi-disciplinary teams, as well as their disciplinary and design knowledge. Finally, student reflections suggest that engagement in deep design discussions has an important integrating role relative to CDTL in project-based environments.