Academic Skills for Interdisciplinary Studies

What's a theoretical framework for? How do you effectively present your data in a figure? What's the secret to a good presentation?

As an interdisciplinary student, you delve into theories and research methods from a whole range of disciplines. Academic skills are the tools that you can use to take in, develop, integrate and question knowledge. This guide provides specific instructions, tips and examples to help students develop these skills, both during and after their studies.

As academic education focuses on research, the empirical cycle forms a key theme of the book, including when discussing the following skills:

• Searching for, critically reading and analysing scholarly texts
• Formulating research questions
• Making concepts measurable, qualitatively and quantitatively
• Organizing literature and data
• Analysing and formulating an argument
• Academic writing
• Collaborating
• Reflecting
• Presenting

This handbook offers practical instructions, tips, and tricks that help undergraduate students to develop the skills needed for an interdisciplinary curriculum.

Koen van der Gaast spent three years working as a lecturer for the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies’ Bachelor’s programme in Future Planet Studies, where he lectured on academic skills, among other things. He is now a PhD candidate at Wageningen University & Research and Aeres University of Applied Sciences, Almere.

Laura Koenders, PhD, works at the Bachelorprogramme Psychobiology at the University of Amsterdam. Here she teaches Academical Skills, and different courses around the topics neuropsychology, neuroanatomy and research skills.

Ger Post spent five years working at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies, including as a lecturer in academic skills for the Bachelor’s programme in Natural and Social Sciences. He now works as an educational specialist at the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Melbourne.