On November 17th, the CSL team will host a CSL Learning Lab on the topic of Interdisciplinary Community Service Learning
How do you make interdisciplinary collaboration actually work for students, for educators, and for the partners involved?
That is the question at the centre of this session. Community Service Learning connects education to real societal challenges. When you add an interdisciplinary dimension, a new layer of complexity comes in. Getting students from different disciplines to not just sit at the same table, but to genuinely think and work from their different perspectives. Getting mono-disciplinary colleagues to build something coherent together. Bringing a societal partner into that process in a way that’s either productive or at least instructive (preferably both).
These are logical walls to bump into, and there are no easy answers. But we can teach each other from experience.
Case studies
During this session we use the Interdisciplinary Community Service Learning modules (iCSL1 & iCSL2) as a central case. iCSL is a Master’s elective developed by the Athena Institute, consisting of two modules open to students from any Master’s programme at VU. You can find more information here.
Content
We look at what interdisciplinary collaboration looks like in practice: how student teams are formed, how societal partners are involved, and what this means for course design. But this session is as much a conversation as a presentation. Whether you are already running an interdisciplinary course or just starting to think about it, your experience is part of what makes this session useful.
Speakers will be announced shortly. More information about the programme, location and content will follow in the coming weeks.
