Mar 30 2012: What a great conversation to start my day! I run a transdisciplinary Masters programme in the UK, across technology, e-sciences, digital arts and the humanities, and for the students on my course the ability to work across and beyond discipline boundaries is extremely exciting (and challenging!) and leads to really innovative products/processes/ideas. (If you're interested, you can see the kind of work that this kind of transdisciplinary approach leads to at www.ioct.dmu.ac.uk/masters). It's not just having the specialist knowledge from different disciplines that is beneficial but also the practical understanding of the different working practices and processes of different disciplines. Being able to communicate and across disciplines is the key, leading to a deeper understanding of connections, which can result in groundbreaking work. Having people in the workforce who can work in this way, with a understanding of the value of different disciplines and how they work together can surely only be beneficial for society.
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A comment on Conversation: Does society need more interdisciplinary work? Or more well-rounded individuals working together?