Transdisciplinary collaboration and lifelong learning: Fostering and supporting new learning opportunities

The contexts provided by the world of the 21 century require that our societies rethink and reinvent learning, teaching, working, and collaboration. A first basic challenge insufficiently addressed by prior research and practice is that almost all of the significant problems of tomorrow will be systemic problems, which cannot be addressed by any one specialty. These problems require transdisciplinary collaboration that focuses on opportunities for knowledge workers to work in teams, communities, and organizations that encompass multiple ways of knowing and collaborating. A second basic challenge is that learning can no longer be dichotomized into a place and time to acquire knowledge (school) and a place and time to apply knowledge (the workplace). To educate students today requires that we provide them with opportunities and soft skills to become lifelong learners. This paper (1) discusses the conceptual frameworks that we have developed to address these challenges; (2) describes our implementation and experience teaching a one semester graduate course based on our framework; and (3) discusses implications and future opportunities. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.