Exposing students to interdisciplinary learning experiences has many benefits including a richer understanding of complex problems, promoting metacognition, and recognizing how to effectively use their skills. For biology students, immersion in creativity and design-thinking inherent to the arts can aid in their ability to imagine, innovate and communicate science. For art students who have been trained to develop unique visual vocabularies, an important learning experience would be to communicate didactic knowledge of an unfamiliar domain in a way that is visually compelling, imaginatively open-ended and informative. For both cohorts of students, academic training at the undergraduate level has remained somewhat sequestered in disciplinary silos. If we are to truly prepare students for careers in which they innovate, work collaboratively, solve problems and continue to learn, then we must provide authentic inquiry-based assignments that allow them to see the value of such proficiencies. This was the rationale behind designing this interdisciplinary assignment for biology and art students at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Here, we report on the design, implementation and insights from the pilot offering of this assignment. We hope that this provides a useful teaching tool for instructors interested in promoting interdisciplinary teaching and learning at the undergraduate level.

中文翻译：

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促进跨学科学习：针对高级生物学和绘画课程的本科生的跨课程作业†

让学生享受跨学科的学习经验有很多好处，包括对复杂问题的更深入理解，促进元认知以及认识到如何有效地运用他们的技能。对于生物学专业的学生来说，沉浸于艺术固有的创造力和设计思维中可以帮助他们想象，创新和传播科学的能力。对于受过训练以开发独特的视觉词汇的艺术专业学生来说，重要的学习经验是以视觉上令人信服，想象力开放且内容丰富的方式交流不熟悉领域的教学知识。对于这两个学生群体，在本科级别的学术培训仍被隔离在学科孤岛中。如果我们要为学生真正地为他们的创新职业做好准备，进行协作，解决问题并继续学习，那么我们必须提供基于真实查询的作业，使他们能够看到这种熟练程度的价值。这就是为多伦多斯卡伯勒大学的生物学和艺术专业学生设计跨学科作业的基本原理。在这里，我们将报告此任务的试验产品的设计，实施和见解。我们希望这为有兴趣在本科层次上促进跨学科教学的教师提供了有用的教学工具。我们从该任务的试点产品中报告设计，实施和见解。我们希望这为有兴趣在本科层次上促进跨学科教学的教师提供了有用的教学工具。我们会从该任务的试验产品中报告设计，实施和见解。我们希望这为有兴趣在本科层次上促进跨学科教学的教师提供了有用的教学工具。