Transforming paradigms through a novel transdisciplinary design build course: a case study on engineering and architecture students’ learning impact at a Canadian university in partnership with Shoal Lake 40 First Nation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The research presented in this thesis focuses on the learning impact of students' participation in a novel transdisciplinary design build course offered by the faculties of engineering and architecture at the University of Manitoba in partnership with Shoal Lake 40 First Nation (SL40 FN). Transdisciplinarity brings different people and their respective knowledges and worldviews together to address a common goal/challenge, often within a sustainability context. In this course, the instructors and Indigenous community partners aimed to transform the way architecture and engineering students are educated to design and build collaboratively across disciplines and cultures. A qualitative intrinsic case study employing cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) and the researcher’s social constructivist perspective narrates the learning journeys of six non-Indigenous students in the design build course. Participant interviews, portfolios and course field notes were analyzed. CHAT activity systems were generated to analyze students’ learning in seven key activities in the course: the (1) historical context motivating the course provided on the first day, (2) cultural teachings from Elders, (3) community site visits and participation in ceremonies, (4) conceptual to final design, (5) Freedom Road Powwow, (6) prefabrication of design, and (7) onsite build. These activities were examined to better understand how the students navigated boundaries of (i) disciplinary practice (engineering and architecture), (ii) design actualization from theory to 3D, and (iii) relationship-building and collaboration with the Indigenous partners. Students’ learning at the boundaries of discipline, design, and culture displayed paradigm shifts as pre-existing stereotypes, prejudices, knowledge gaps, and embodied ways of knowing were challenged to create pathways of perspective, communication, practice and identity formation supportive of interdisciplinary and intercultural knowledge exchange and relationship-building. The findings from this research demonstrate that the SL40 FN Design Build course promoted epistemic diversification in the mentalities and hearts of the student participants who gained a greater knowledge and value of the respective discipline and Indigenous culture. Little research has been published on higher educational transdisciplinary environments teaching engineering and architecture students to work with Indigenous community stakeholders. The research presented in this thesis aims to provide engineering and architecture educators and leaders with information on how project-based transdisciplinary courses can help prepare students to work on real-world complex challenges across disciplines in ways that constructively and respectfully navigate fragmented practices and relationships between diverse peoples and epistemologies resulting from the colonialization of Canada and as currently present in national and global sustainability challenges.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.036 | 0.011 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".