The document discusses using connected learning and open pedagogy approaches to strengthen an Interdisciplinary Studies (IDS) program. It outlines how tools like social media, ePorts, nondisposable assignments, and open educational resources can help provide students more agency, foster connections, and lower costs. The IDS program saw strong growth after shifting to these learner-driven approaches, with enrollments increasing 750% and projected to become the third largest major. The document advocates for making IDS synonymous with open, applied, and learner-centered pedagogies to better integrate knowledge and empower students.

1. Technology for Open Collaboration
How to Harness the Power of the Digital
in an Interdisciplinary Studies Curriculum
Robin DeRosa
@actualham

2. The Story of IDS at Plymouth State
• Small, comprehensive public university in NH
• 4,100 undergraduates, 2,000 graduate students
• IDS began in 1974
• Averaged 10.1 enrolled majors from 1978-2014
• Added introductory and research methods courses in 2012
• Shifted to Connected Learning pedagogy in 2014
• Currently 90 majors (and growing by 25 per semester)
• 750% growth in enrollments
• Projected to be 3rd largest major at university within 2 years

3. Framing the Narrative: Connected Learning
• Students create their own majors
• Write entrance essays explaining how their coursework integrates
to move them toward their personal, intellectual, and professional
goals
• INTEGRATION is intentional
• AGENCY was incidental
• In 2014, I relaunched the courses and advising protocols around a
Connected Learning approach

4. ConnectedLearning

5. Connected Learning: My Journey

6. Effects of
Textbook Prices
• 60% of students report not
purchasing a required
textbook because of cost,
and 23% regularly go without
books due to cost
• 50% of students report
taking fewer courses due to
textbook costs
• 14% have dropped a course
and 10% have withdrawn
from a course due to
textbook costs
2012 Survey of 22,000 students, Florida Virtual Campus, comprised of the
12 universities and 28 colleges in the Florida state system.
CCBYDagnyMolflic.kr/p/5ksCNP

7. Open Educational Resources (OER)
OER are teaching, learning, and research
resources that reside in the public domain or
have been released under an intellectual
property license that permits their free use
and repurposing by others. Open educational
resources include full courses, course
materials, modules, textbooks, streaming
videos, tests, software, and any other tools,
materials, or techniques used to support
access to knowledge.
Hewlett Foundation Definition

8. CreativeCommons

9. The 5 R’s of OER
•Reuse
•Remix
•Revise
•Retain
•Redistribute
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License.

11. Hypothes.is

12. Students
contribute as
authors, editors,
artists, project
managers…

13. Connected Learning: My Journey

14. Interdisciplinary Studies:
A Connected Learning Approach
• Leverage the principles of Open Pedagogy to fuel an IDS program
• ACCESS: lower course costs, build case for public investment in Higher
Ed by linking courses and projects to wider community.
• AGENCY: see interdisciplinary pathways as learner-driven rather than
institutionally prescribed.
• CONNECTION: use tools that enable students to enter ongoing
scholarly and civic conversations.
• CONTEXT: imagine the classroom as a node in a wider public
ecosystem.

15. Connected Learning ↔ Interdisciplinary Study
• Sticky edges encourage the broadening
of fields.
• Linked nodes encourage interdisciplinary
collaboration.
• Rhizomatic structures encourage
intellectual humility.
• Open gates encourage transdisciplinary
partnerships.
• Learner-driven education encourages the
emergence of new fields of study: the
interdisciplines and the interdisciplinary.

16. Connected Learning for IDS
Social Media
Twitter
Hypthes.is
ePorts
User-designed & -controlled
websites
Nondisposable
Assignments
Blogs
Books

17. Social Media: Networks for Learning
Twitter: classes, programs, PLNs
Hypothes.is: dialogic, public reading
Social Media provides the
infrastructure to allow for
productive, energizing, and
supportive collaborations
across departments, fields, and
constituencies.

18. #PlymouthIDS
• Program announcements
• Social musings that build
community
• Sharing student work
• Group collaboration
• News about education, IDS, and
interdisciplinary research
• Synchronous guest chats
• Async live tweets of readings or
events
• Class activities (fishbowls)

19. Personal Learning Networks (PLNs)
PLNs matter even more for IDS
students than they do for
students in traditional majors.
PLNs help students connect to
more of a cohort of scholars
and practitioners in their
fields, and they help create a
mosaic-oriented professional
community appropriate for the
shape of interdisciplinary
research and activity.

20. Hypothes.is: Annotate the Web
Annotating the web
helps students engage
with content, rather
than consume it.
It also contributes to
the expansion of
knowledge by treating
all texts as unfinished,
open to improvement
and analysis.

21. Connected Learning for IDS
Social Media
Twitter
Hypthes.is
ePorts
User-designed & -controlled
websites
Nondisposable
Assignments
Blogs
Books

22. the ePort: portfolio & portal
INTRO
• Nick Scola: Wildlife Management
• http://nicholasscolawm.com/
• Mickey Damon: Criminal Behavior
• http://mickeybea.com/
• Kayleigh Bennett: Marketing & Creative Services
• http://kayleighbennett.com/
CAPSTONE
• Alexander Boudreau: Innovation Through Design
• Marina Phillips: Treating Anxiety with Dance & Movement
ePorts are one part
portfolio, where students
can showcase their best work
and present their best digital
footprints, and one part
portal, where students can
invite commentary and
collaboration on the research
and ideas they are beginning to
contribute to the world.

23. Connected Learning for IDS
Social Media
Twitter
Hypthes.is
ePorts
User-designed & -controlled
websites
Nondisposable
Assignments
Blogs
Books

24. Nondisposable Assignments
BLOGSWicked problems; interdisciplinary success
stories; higher education innovation; new
research in their fields; their own educational
paths; application of theory to practice;
responses to news articles, capstone projects…
BOOKSFoundational terminology; metaphors for
interdisciplinary learning; history of
disciplinarity and the academy; emergence of
interdisciplinary studies; research rubrics; PLN
guides…

25. Interdisciplinary Studies:
A Connected Learning Approach

26. Mission-Driven IDS Pedagogy
• Jennifer Sasser & Chantelle A.M. Richmond: interdisciplinarity as
not only integrative but also as applied, learner-driven, Freirian,
empowering.
• Let’s build programs that integrate knowledge,
interrogate/challenge/redesign learning structures, and put
learners at the center of their educational processes.
• Let’s make Interdisciplinary Studies synonymous with access-
oriented, learner-driven, and applied pedagogies.

27. The Digital World Enables OPEN Education
•Lowering costs to increase
access
•Empowering student drivers
•Connecting conversations
•Contextualizing the academy

28. • More OpenPed Examples
• Building an OER Textbook
with PressBooks
• ePorts, Hypothes.is, Twitter,
Creative Commons
• Challenges of Working on
the Open Web
• Obstacles to “Open”
• Why IDS Should Be “Open”
• Who to Follow to Get
Involved