Emerging and Sustainable Cities: An interdisciplinary, cross-cultural and trans-disciplinary teaching program

This teaching project is embedded within a three-year applied research project: The Emerging and Sustainable Cities Initiative (ESCI) is a partnership between ETH and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), funded by the Swiss Ministry for Economic Cooperation (SECO). The project involves D-BAUG, D-ARCH and D-USYS, runs until June 2016 and is focused on developing integrated urban sustainability solutions for the mid-sized city of Barranquilla in Colombia.

Within this context, we aim to develop a teaching tool that addresses learning at the interface, and incorporates interdisciplinary, cross-cultural and trans-disciplinary methodologies. Master students from the different ETH departments will work collaboratively to enhance interdisciplinary teaching. Master students from a Colombian partner university will also participate to reinforce cross-cultural exchange. Practitioners from the field will be invited to facilitate peer learning and trans-disciplinary teaching.

The teaching tool will be tested over three-week summer schools in 2014 and 2015, which will take place in Zurich and Barranquilla. It is intended that students work on the ground to produce integrated sustainable solutions. This project will inform future strategies for inter-departmental teaching, notably within the Initiative for Science Technology and Policy. Close interaction with the “critical thinking” initiative at ETH forms an integral and essential part of the project.

Several factors are vital for the development and operating activities associated with this project as well as its future success.

First and foremost an arena for inter-departmental collaboration within ETH must be maintained. This will ensure that the D-ARCH Chair of Architecture and Urban Design and D-USYS TdLab work together in order to design an efficient and replicable teaching tool.

The tool must introduce students to the fundamental differences between disciplines and equip them to work at the interfaces of knowledge fields. The key factor here is commitment from different departments and the ability to test the tool with a mixed and balanced student group. Furthermore, to enable the tool to be applied in a cross-cultural setting, a strong partnership must be established with a Colombian counterpart university. Finally it is essential that the practitioners involved adhere to the teaching goals, and are able to contribute to a strong trans-disciplinary learning environment.

Together these factors will ensure the success of the project, and must be given special and continual attention to bring about high performance.

This project breaches numerous boundaries. It seeks to develop an integrated teaching tool that functions in the liminal spaces between different disciplines, cultures and institutions. It will establish a teaching methodology that combines interdisciplinary, cross-cultural and trans-disciplinary approaches. Concretely this means that ETH students will train to work with students from other disciplines, but also with students from other disciplines and with practitioners. The practitioners will be involved as participants in the teaching activities and not just as lecturers, creating new opportunities for peer learning.

This project could have been improved by including a longer ramp up period during the semester – this would have allowed the students to make more out of the time spent in Barranquilla. We could have improved the project by re-considering the role of the partner university and providing clearer guidelines as to their role and input in teaching.

The students in general were satisfied with the course, and felt that the summer school had met the learning goals. However they experienced difficulties integrating the many various teaching inputs and felt there was at times a disconnect between the various units.
They also felt it challenging to be working in group throughout the process, and some struggled to get their voices heard. One recurrent comment was that it was difficult to make progress in such a short time span and they would have wanted to work on the topic for longer.

• Embed summer schools into semester learning so they are not stand-alone events
• Carefully consider the dificulties of teaching ETH students with local students and try to match as best as possible ages, levels and incentives.
• Encourage students to reflect upon teaching experience in a blog, newsletter or other media.
• Mentor PhD tutors so they come away with solid teaching skills.

• ETH_news
• Website SummerSchool_2014/2015
• Web USYS TdLab