Piloting interdisciplinary learning measurement for sustainable built environments

Interdisciplinary knowledge, skills, and values to develop sustainable built environments is critical for today's workforce. Successfully integrating such knowledge in curricula in higher education institutions remains challenging: few evaluation tools exist that can measure interdisciplinary student learning outcomes and when they exist, tools primarily measure student perceptions instead of student learning outcomes. To address this gap in the literature, this research (1) conducted a literature review bridging four disciplines of the built environment at a Tier 1 research university (i.e., planning, interior design, construction management, and landscape architecture); (2) developed a diagnostic tool for student learning that can distinguish between disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge, skills, and values for sustainable built environments; and (3) used expert verifications and student test runs via pre- and post-diagnostic in selected courses taught cross-disciplinary in a school that houses four accredited programs of sustainable built environments to pilot the tool. The contribution to the body of knowledge with this study is the final diagnostic tool to objectively evaluate disciplinary and interdisciplinary sustainable built environment related student learning in the presented four disciplines. Despite the limited sample size, pre- and post-diagnostic comparisons show that the tool measured improvement in student learning in both disciplinary and interdisciplinary sustainable built environment categories. Finally, the paper provides directions for future research.