Interdisciplinarity

Reflection

First, I this experience allowed me to learn that I prefer biology to computer science. I entered college planning to use biology as a way to complement my coding, but the courses I took in the subject taught me that I do not want to debug code on a computer all day. Instead, I plan to use my computer science and math knowledge to complement my biology research. Second, I was able to learn about how people in these different fields approach a problem. This experience gave the base knowledge needed to successfully interact and communicate with people from other fields. It also has let me incorporate this knowledge into solving problems within my field. As a result of this experience, I can understand and produce basic models of biological problems, and I can learn more about either field as necessary. Most importantly, I can recognize the limits of my knowledge and collaborate with someone who knows more than me if necessary.

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GCSP Connection

This experience meets the expectations for a GCSP interdisciplinary experience since I am a biology major, and I will be learning skills from additional fields that I would not obtain otherwise. It is connected to the challenge of Advancing Personalized Learning because the methods from mathematics and especially computer science have great potential within personalized learning due to their ability to organize large amounts of information in a way that a novice can explore on their own, at their own pace. This is connected to the challenge of Engineering Better Medicines because the mathematical and computational skills learned through this experience can be used in my later research in this field. Computational/ mathematical models have promise to help make sense of biology’s complex data and better understanding these fields can help me use these models more effectively.

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This experience will contribute to learning perspectivism, since it will give me exposure to the ways of thinking about the world used in other fields. By better understanding the benefits and limitations of computer science and math, I can better determine when to seek out and use these methods in my work. This will also aid my development of realistic vision. Experiencing other fields will make me less susceptible to the trap of disciplinary thinking. This may help me be a better team member, since I can understand how team members are trained to think.

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Learning objectives

• Identify the different disciplines that contribute to the solution of a complex problem. For the problem of better understanding the body, biology is clearly very important. However, chemistry is also needed to explain how the molecules react, and physics can explain what holds together then proteins that help them react. Computer science is needed to make sense of large quantities of data, and math can be used to find patterns and make predictions.

• Describe and apply strategies for creating common ground between different disciplinary perspectives. One strategy for identifying common ground is to appeal to common reasons for being involved in the project. For example, both my Biomathematics group and interdisciplinary collaborations in science have shared goals of learning more about an interesting topic and external success (grades or publications).

• Describe and apply bridging strategies that facilitate the conscious integration of different disciplines. One strategy is building extra time into the timeline for explanation. People from different fields may enter with different assumptions, so it is important to ensure everyone is on the same page. Also, it takes additional time to explain discipline-specific information. For example, in the Biomathematics group, the math majors explained how to use LaTeX, while I explained the biological background that lead to the project.