Collaborative teaching as a tool in university development

Goal of interdisciplinary education is to improve learning of students: to support deep learning and adaptation of working life skills. In this context, teachers are seen as resources at courses. However, interdisciplinary collaborative teaching can also be seen as a tool for teachers' continual learning, implementation of universities' education strategies, and seed when building cross-cutting communities in universities. All these perspectives have emerged in the interdisciplinary co-teaching context in Aalto University. Aalto was borne as a merger of three universities from areas of business, design and technology. Aalto aims at building competitive edge by combining knowledge from different disciplines. Consequently, interdisciplinarity in education must be central in Aalto. In this study, we focus on the course development process practices, which build have been used in development of interdisciplinary education in Aalto: i) pedagogical mentoring, ii) entrepreneurship integration, and iii) interdisciplinary minor program. The attempt of the present study on Aalto experiences is to bring visible the challenges and enablers as well as to make suggestions on best practices.