Resumen de Developing a measure of interdisciplinary competence
Lisa R. Lattuca, David Knight, Inger Bergom
Calls for greater investments in interdisciplinary education and a shift to outcomes-based accreditation criteria in engineering haveled to a need for a measure to assess interdisciplinary learning. The present study describes the development and testing of asurvey-based, self-report measure to assess the interdisciplinary competence of undergraduate engineers. Using a nationallyrepresentative sample of 5249 undergraduates from 31 institutions, three discrete scales related to interdisciplinary competenceemerged from factor analytic procedures: Interdisciplinary Skills, Recognizing Disciplinary Perspectives, and Reflective Behavior.Construct validity of the metrics is demonstrated through a description of the rigorous research and development process for thesurvey items. Statistical analyses indicate that scales significantly distinguish groups of students (i.e., by engineering discipline andby class standing), thus demonstrating the metrics’ concurrent validity.
