Thinking across boundaries: New interdisciplinary learning modules expand the College’s curricular offerings

Interdisciplinary learning is one of the cornerstones of the Yale-NUS liberal arts education model, where students are guided to synthesise diverse branches of inquiry to arrive at a higher-level of understanding about core issues impacting society.

Instead of simply lecturing students to think critically and broadly, innovative pedagogies are developed by the College’s diverse pool of faculty members to empower students with the resources and know-how to do so.

Utilising flipped classroom and experiential learning approaches, two courses — Adolescent Development, and Plants and People — are the latest additions to the College’s interdisciplinary offerings.

The two new interdisciplinary learning courses, Adolescent Development and Plants and People, are taught by Assistant Professor of Social Sciences (Psychology) Hae Yeon Lee (left) and Yale Visiting Senior Lecturer Linda Puth (right), respectively. Images provided by Asst Prof Lee and Dr Puth.  

Since its first iteration in January 2021, Assistant Professor of Social Sciences (Psychology) Hae Yeon Lee has actively incorporated an interdisciplinary focus in her module, Adolescent Development. The seminar-style course strives to equip students with firm theoretical and empirical foundations to tackle pressing problems afflicting youths in society today.

To achieve this, class readings and seminar discussions focus on synergising research from neuroscience, developmental psychology, sociology, and intervention sciences, driven by the recognition that adolescent behaviour and motivation arise from “complex interplays between their biological, psychological, and sociological environments,” Asst Prof Lee explained.

Covering substantive topics like health risk-taking, puberty and hormones, and socioemotional development, the course also emphasises real-world implications of how society treats young people through parenting, school policy, technology and new media interactions.

Indeed, for Nur Shyartiana Binte Saifulbahri (Class of 2023), the real-world pertinence was one of her greatest take-aways from the class. “I really enjoyed how Asst Prof Lee makes what we read and learn relevant, by prompting us to think about their implications on various fields of public policy, such as health and education,” she said.

Nevertheless, Asst Prof Lee realised that some students may struggle with comprehending advanced neuroscientific models and statistical jargon. To overcome this, she incorporated student-led presentations as part of her curriculum, where students teamed up in pairs to communicate journal findings to the class. The collaborative, flipped classroom strategy strived to empower students to take charge of learning, by parsing and explaining complex research findings “with their own words, carefully and thoughtfully,” said Asst Prof Lee.

Students in Adolescent Development listening in to a peer-led student presentation. Image provided by Asst Prof Lee.

Ultimately, Asst Prof Lee hopes students walk away with unique, diverse perspectives and use the lessons they have learned to “generate novel insights on prevention and intervention focused ideas for youths — who could be their own children, siblings, students, customers, patients, or their past selves”.

Similarly, Yale Visiting Senior Lecturer Linda Puth emphasised interdisciplinary and bottom-up learning approaches in her course, Plants and People. Combining basic biology and applied historical, anthropological, and artistic perspectives, she guided students to explore humans’ intricate and nuanced relationship with plants through a myriad of lenses.

“While my class talks about a wide variety of biological aspects of plants, from structure to physiology, evolution and ecology, we also explore how those topics relate to human nutrition and culinary traditions, how agriculture and trade in agricultural commodities changed human societies, plants as inspiration for art, and current environmental issues,” she explained.

Reflecting on her inspiration for teaching the course, Dr Puth shared that she is a firm believer that science should not be set apart from human experience. “I have always viewed science as reaching into all corners of life,” she said.

Coming from a background that emphasises ‘hard sciences’, Zi Yang Lim (Class of 2024), a student of the class, shared that Dr Puth helped him appreciate the multiple ways science could be manifested in real life. “Dr Puth managed to draw that connection — for example, how beer is formed through the fermentation of starches in domesticated grains such as wheat or barley. The domestication of plants was key in the transition from a life as a hunter-gatherer to the sedentary civilisation we live in today,” he said. “That was really striking.”

Beyond classroom learning, experiential learning is a key component of the course as well: to help them witness the theories come to life, students went on field trips, both on campus and off-campus. At the courtyards of Yale-NUS Residential Colleges, students appraised plant structures and evolutionary history. At the Singapore Botanic Gardens, students explored plant secondary compounds and the importance of plants in Singapore’s trade and land development history.

Most recently, at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Museum, students investigated the role of plants as inspiration for art, reflecting evolving environmental landscapes.

Students in the Plants and People course on a field trip to the National University of Singapore (NUS) Museum. Image taken by Darren Ang for Yale-NUS College.

Dr Puth (left) guiding students on the field trip at the NUS Museum. Image taken by Darren Ang for Yale-NUS College.

For Zi Yang, the field trip evoked feelings of awe as he observed how historical developments could be traced in the artworks there. He reflected, “Field trips always reduce the distance felt when we’re simply staring at pictures on the screen and learning about abstract concepts.”

The interdisciplinary and experiential approaches of the course have helped concretise abstract, textbook concepts, imparting a rewarding and personally meaningful learning experience to students, as it fostered greater cross-boundary thinking, creative problem-solving, and provided real-world relevance.