The Role of a Facilitator in Multidisciplinary Collaboration and Student’s Experienced-Based Learning

Abstract

This paper focuses on the necessity of experiential learning models and the importance of facilitators in the implementation of collaborative learning for students who have had no prior experience to such collaboration. It proposes a new role for educators in this. Multidisciplinary collaboration is defined as the process where by individuals with different perspectives recognize each other’s expertise. In today’s world, a high-tech business cannot succeed with a team specializing in only one field; business experts are required to collaborate with engineering experts to launch new high-tech businesses. Thus, university students must learn how to collaborate with multiple experts. The research adopts a case study of a Japanese university workshop where engineering, business, and design students, jointly create a high-tech business idea, and test their hypothesis. This multi-disciplinary collaboration develops student’s ability to work with other specialized students. Past literature emphasizes the importance of experience-based learning: a learner recognizes specialized forms of knowledge through team discussion. For students who don’t receive such learning, it’s hard to understand how they learn from their experiences. As most Japanese students don’t practice collaborating with other specialized people, they don’t understand how to learn from their experiences. They are beginners in learning multidisciplinary collaboration, revealed by the fact that university students couldn’t hold effective discussions and explain their own learning experiences. Interviews were conducted with students participating in collaborative learning workshop at university. It was found that novices repeatedly engaged in trial and error without effectively learning from experience, and the presence or absence of a facilitator influenced how they thought and derived value from their experiences. This challenge cannot be adequately addressed by students who are complete beginners; thus, intervention by educators or students who are actively engaged in collaboration is crucial. It was concluded that, irrespective of the outcomes of the workshop, the presence of a facilitator is key in promoting collaborative learning. Using Kolb’s (2017) learning model, the study clarifies the impediments to a beginner’s experience-based learning and how to overcome them. It proposes the role of a facilitator who is expected to promote experience-based learning. This paper could resolve issues related to multidisciplinary collaboration by adding a new facilitator role to intervene in the learning process and the students’ experience-based learning.