Methods in a place: bringing together language, ecology and geography for a final-year undergraduate field course

The ability to work in interdisciplinary teams is becoming increasingly important in academic environments and the workplace. However, few university programmes deliver course content in truly interdisciplinary formats, instead structuring coursework around traditional disciplinary boundaries. This project’s aims were to: Include student partners in designing an interdisciplinary, experiential course where content was structured around a shared physical place rather than disciplinary boundaries. Embed authentic interactions with external stakeholders to enhance learning through an enquiry-based approach. Staff and students from across three colleges within the University of Glasgow co-designed activities for a cross-disciplinary, final-year undergraduate field course, following Gibson et al.’s (2019) ‘three-faculty rule’. During spring 2024, a team of five staff and eight students representing the Schools of Geography and Earth Science, Biodiversity, One Health and Comparative Medicine, and Celtic and Gaelic Studies worked together to structure and then deliver lecture- and practical-based course content centred on the cultural heritage, language, landscape, and species conservation of the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. The programme consisted of a one-week intensive set of lectures delivered primarily by the student partners, followed by a one-week residential visit to this location. While on-site the team met with a range of stakeholders and visited locations that provided a central focus for student enquiry. After the course, student partners authored draft intended learning outcomes (ILOs), proposed assessment methods, and provided feedback on the stakeholders, locations, and sessions from their experience. The informal spaces and novel surroundings created by the course facilitated learning and an awareness of the value of different disciplinary approaches to a shared problem (Chan and Wheeler, 2023) and deepened student appreciation of their discipline. Overall, this project demonstrated that interdisciplinary coursework at the final-year undergraduate level can be highly successful due to a more holistic approach and increased student confidence.