Transformative Teaching

Abstract

In today’s work environment, employers increasingly desire graduates with competencies that transcend disciplinary boundaries. Among the desired success skills are collaboration, communication, and critical thinking. To develop and study the acquisition of these skills, students enrolled in the ‘FDST 420 – Fruit and Vegetable Technology’ course and the ‘IDES-491 – Contemporary Issues in Product Design’ course at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln were immersed in a practice-based project addressing an open-ended, authentic (real-world) problem. Students were challenged with proposing solutions for mitigating tomato post-harvest loss in Nigeria. The project was set in Nigeria due to its significance as one of the largest tomato producers in Africa and globally. Beyond that, the social, cultural, and economic contexts of Nigerian tomato agricultural methods presented opportunities for in-depth critical inquiry grounded in sustainability. Students were assigned into transdisciplinary teams to work collaboratively. To further understand the problem, external stakeholders including practitioners, government officials from Nigeria were invited to (virtually) introduce the problem and support students as they worked through the process of problem framing and solving. Students leveraged their prior knowledge to come up with suitable and sustainable solutions to the problem. Preliminary results from the study indicate that student’s critical analysis of a real-life problem, aptitude in addressing the multilayered complexities of a diverse community, and the perception towards learning experiences were influenced by the nature of the transdisciplinary environment. Furthermore, evidence showed that the pedagogical approaches that crossed disciplinary boundaries enhanced student’s enthusiasm and skills. This study was a pilot exploration into the transformative nature of adapting practice-based pedagogical methods in transdisciplinary teams to enhance student success skills