Wednesday Onsite Presentation Session 2

Interdisciplinary, Multidisciplinary & Transdisciplinary Education

Session Chair: Kyoko Hombo

11:25-11:50

68452 |

The Effectiveness of Interdisciplinary Learning on 21st Century Skills for Taiwanese Elementary School Students

Ya-Ting Yang, National Cheng Kung University Institute of Education, Taiwan

Chih-Chan Cheng, National Cheng Kung University Institute of Education, Taiwan

The World Economic Forum has proposed a vision of Education 4.0 in 2022, pointing out that innovative pedagogies and emerging technologies should be applied to place students at the center of learning and develop their ability to solve real-world problems. This study implemented STEAM project-based learning (PBL) combined with emerging technologies in Taiwanese elementary schools, hoping to improve students’ 21st century skills (communication, collaboration, and problem solving). Seven experimental schools with 343 students from grades 4-6 participated in this study. Each school had an experimental group and a comparison group. There were 173 students in the experimental group and 170 students in the comparison group. The experimental group received STEAM PBL combined with emerging technologies, and the comparison group received traditional pedagogy. Both groups completed pre- and post-test questionnaires on communication, collaboration, and problem solving. Considering the differences in pedagogical background between the seven schools, this study applied meta-analysis to calculate the overall effect size to obtain more accurate results. The results found that the experimental group was more effective than the comparison group in improving students’ communication, collaboration, and problem solving, all of which achieved medium effect sizes. It shows that STEAM PBL combined with emerging technologies can effectively increase students’ 21st century skills, which is of great help to their future learning performance and career development.

11:50-12:15

68172 |

Developing a Curriculum for an Emerging Job Role

Kheng Hock Lee, SingHealth Community Hospitals, Singapore

Social prescribing connects people to community resources with a view to improve their health and wellbeing. It is an emerging job role needed in the health and social care sector. We conducted a Training Needs Analysis and identified the competencies needed for a practitioner of social prescribing. A competency-based curriculum following adult learning principles was developed and piloted. The training program was submitted for accreditation by SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) which is a statutory board that promotes lifelong learning skills mastery in areas that are needed in the future workforce. The course received accreditation by Workforce Singapore (WSG)and was well received by learners. In this paper, we present the structure of our course, the process of its development and implementation and the outcome of the training program.

12:15-12:40

68906

| Towards Efficient and Effective Doctoral Education in Biomedical Sciences: Nurturing Transferable Skills

Kyoko Hombo, Osaka University, Japan

Graduate education funding organisations in Japan focus on nurturing doctoral students with transferable skills to broaden their minds and see beyond academia. Biomedical doctoral students prioritize practical research, dedicating themselves to basic research and devoting their time to a research-centred daily life; their specialty is narrowed down to its deepest level. Moreover, some students work as medical practitioners. It is desirable to provide doctoral education by considering the connection of education to research as well as a researchintegrated education by ensuring that the learning contributes constructively to students’ own research. What would be an effective and efficient approach to training students that would cover all required skills when students come from diverse backgrounds and have different lifecycles? This study introduces a holistic approach used in a credit module conducted in English at an interdepartmental doctoral training programme within biomedical sciences at a traditional national university in Japan. The module aims to improve students’ transferable skills as a scientist. Each session includes a series of research communications where students introduce and exchange their research concepts and approaches, followed by discussions in a student-led symposium format. The findings of a questionnaire survey, including student reflections and evaluations of the module as well as their perceptions of whether the module was efficient and effective from the perspective of research and education balance, will be discussed.