Interdisciplinarity of concept maps

In modern life an increasing percentage of jobs require employees to think critically and creatively, and to be make innovative but knowledge-based decisions. This requires the ability to connect different domain areas, to understand interdisciplinary connections. One of the main difficulties in the attempt to improve interdisciplinary knowledge in schools is a lack of effective assessment and evaluation tools. How to facilitate students’ demonstration of their interdisciplinary understanding by integrating multiple source of knowledge from two or more disciplines is a constant challenge for educators. The primary focus of this study is to explore the viability of assessing students’ interdisciplinary understanding through the construction of concept maps. In this study we compare two methods of measuring the interdisciplinarity of concept maps. The results showed that the two methods (experts’ ratings and Interdisciplinary Quality Index) correlate very highly.