To motivate and guide teachers in interdisciplinary development, we will stimulate and inform them through INTED's workshops, summer institutes, pedagogical courses, and the incentives listed below. Teachers may, among others, contribute by developing and integrating interdisciplinary projects, sessions, courses, and course components into their teaching. To encourage adherence to pedagogical design principles, we will develop a stepwise online guide, which will be continuously adjusted and used as a basis for the summer institutes.
Transformation teams
Each year, teachers and students (who have completed the interdisciplinary facilitator program) can apply for funding for an interdisciplinary transformation team, which will consist of 1-2 teachers, 1-3 students, and support from a CTL or LINK, to develop course materials, sessions, projects, and approaches. To ensure an evidence-based learning design, teachers who have completed the summer institutes or other relevant pedagogical training will be prioritized and a CTL will guide and support the process.
The Interdisciplinary facilitator program
Students are widely used as learning assistants in courses, sessions, and projects. All learning assistants teaching in interdisciplinary courses will be enrolled in a facilitator program to certify them as interdisciplinary facilitators. A module on learning design will prepare them to participate in or lead course transformation teams. Students will also be trained to host interdisciplinary sessions by first participating, then participating as a co-facilitator while being mentored and while following the facilitator program, before becoming responsible for organizing sessions themselves – under supervision. This will make sessions scalable, train students to lead interdisciplinary processes, and initiate a leadership track for facilitators in the honours master programs. A long-term effect of the program will be to increase the pedagogical qualifications of academics – who all once were students.
Interdisciplinary student research experiences
Based on our experience with student research projects, we will have open calls for interdisciplinary summer research projects for students, where researchers can apply for teams of 2-3 students. This will provide students with research experience, which is particularly important in the humanities and the social sciences where there are few such opportunities, and serve as a path to recruit teachers to center activities.
Interdisciplinary Fellows program
To incentivize teachers to invest in developing interdisciplinary teaching and to broaden the INTED team, we will introduce a Fellows program, based on a concept from Michigan State University. Winners must describe an interdisciplinary education project and will receive a teaching sabbatical (one day a week for a year), a course transformation team, and participate in semi-monthly cohort meetings. This will also help them prepare a teaching portfolio for becoming professors or members of the Pedagogical Academy. A parallel program will be launched for students.
Building culture
We will extend program seminars for honour's students, evaluate them, and use the experiences to build learning environments for other programs. We will strengthen the disciplinary CTLs, in particular in the social sciences and the humanities. Through the disciplinary CTLs, we will adapt dissemination and pedagogical methods to teachers’ backgrounds – so that they speak the teachers’ “language” – which is essential for successful dissemination.