Implementing interdisciplinary methods in the educational framework

Abstract

The article aims to study the principles and ways of implementing the interdisciplinary approach into the educational process. The research is based on empirical experience in teaching at higher education institutions, an analysis of educational programmes of higher educational institutions in Ukraine, a survey of medical university lecturers, as well as a pedagogical experiment on the effectiveness of the interdisciplinary approach conducted at Ivano-Frankivsk National Medical University among second-year students of the Dentistry programme. The control group studied two separate subjects, “Foreign (English) Language for Professional Purposes” and “Social Medicine, Public Health, and the Fundamentals of Evidence-Based Medicine”, while the experimental group took an integrated course, Module 1, which combined these two subjects in the form of binary lessons. The integrated course had the most significant impact on forming sufficient and high levels of knowledge, with a difference of 9% and 7%, respectively, between the control and experimental groups. Additionally, the experimental group had 10% fewer students with low-developed skills and abilities. The experiment data confirm the considerable effectiveness of integrated courses, suggesting that universities should actively introduce them into the educational process. The authors propose the following ways to implement the interdisciplinary approach: inclusion of interdisciplinary topics in lectures; conducting binary lectures; integrating common cases into seminar and practical disciplines to solve interdisciplinary practical tasks and other modern educational technologies of problem-based learning; developing interdisciplinary courses for elective and optional subjects; preparing articles and conference presentations with two or more co-authors from related fields of knowledge. Based on the empirical method, it was established that the effectiveness of applying the interdisciplinary approach in higher education is associated with the systematisation and structuring of acquired specialised knowledge, stimulation of student motivation, and scientific inquiry.