Interdisciplinarity in Practice: Reflections on Drones as a Classroom Boundary Object

Abstract

ABSTRACT In an interdisciplinary project-based course, the topic of ‘drones’ served as an essential boundary object both for the students themselves and instructors. Instructors developed the course to facilitate productive exchanges between students from schools of engineering and peace studies involved. In this critical participation paper, we use an experimental reflection and analysis method to explore the instructors’ experience with this class. We demonstrate how this boundary object both facilitated some of the most desirable outcomes related to interdisciplinary partnerships and interfered with them by making collaboration without consensus – or explicit disagreements – possible. The kinds of troublesome surprises that instructors reflect on might be understood as indicative of ecologies of ideas, priorities, and practices that students and instructors bring to the classroom. We suggest that other instructors might also benefit from reflecting on their experiences with interdisciplinarity in the way that we have here.