Quantifying interdisciplinary synergy in higher STEM education

TL;DR

This paper introduces a framework to measure and analyze interdisciplinarity in higher STEM education curricula using large language models and information theory, revealing patterns of synergy across disciplines.

Contribution

It presents a novel method to quantify curriculum interdisciplinarity and designs integrated curricula based on these metrics, advancing educational strategies in STEM fields.

Findings

Higher interdisciplinarity within closely related fields

Engineering fields show the highest synergy scores

Natural sciences are peripheral but foundational to interdisciplinary curricula

Abstract

We propose a framework to quantify and utilize interdisciplinarity in science and engineering curricula at the university-level higher education. We analyze interdisciplinary relations by standardizing large-scale official educational data in Korea using a cutting-edge large language model and constructing knowledge maps for disciplines of scientific education. We design and evaluate single-field and integrated dual-field curricula by adapting pedagogical theory and utilizing information theory-based metrics. We develop standard curricula for individual disciplines and integrated curricula combining two fields, with their interdisciplinarity quantified by the curriculum synergy score. The results indicate higher interdisciplinarity for combinations within or across closely related fields, especially in engineering fields. Based on the analysis, engineering fields constitute the core structure of our design for curriculum interdisciplinarity, while basic natural science fields are located at peripheral stems to provide fundamental concepts.