Exploring University Students' Social Interdependence and Interdisciplinary Understanding within the Context of Interdisciplinary Education

Objectives This study aimed to explore the social interdependence and interdisciplinary understanding of university students in the context of interdisciplinary education. Methods To this end, a survey was conducted with 85 students attending an interdisciplinary liberal arts course at a university in the metropolitan area. The study analyzed social interdependence in the contexts of single-disciplinary and interdisciplinary courses and examined differences across sub-categories. Additionally, the performance and importance of interdisciplinary understanding were identified, and educational needs were calculated by category and item. Results The study results showed no significant differences in students' social interdependence between single-disciplinary and interdisciplinary course contexts. In both contexts, the outcome category scored higher than the means category. Students perceived the importance of all categories of interdisciplinary understanding to be higher than their performance. Among the average values for performance and importance, the reflection and communication categories were higher than collaboration. The ranking of educational needs, calculated based on the gap between performance and importance, was as follows: reflection, communication, knowledge of interdisciplinary paradigms, Knowledge of interdisciplinarity, and collaboration. Among the top 10 items in educational needs rankings, three belonged to the reflection category, two to communication, three to knowledge of interdisciplinary paradigms, and two to Knowledge of interdisciplinarity, with no high-ranking items appearing in the collaboration category. Conclusions Based on the results, educational implications for the design and implementation of interdisciplinary education reflecting the aspects of social interdependence and the educational needs for interdisciplinary understanding were discussed.