Multidisciplinary teaching – Engineering course in advanced building design

Collaboration within the building process is difficult. This calls for employees who are experienced in collaborating in interdisciplinary teams. To fulfil this demand a multidisciplinary course in “Advanced building design” has been developed at the Technical University of Denmark. The goal of the course is to provide training in transprofessionalism and teamwork at the final stage of the engineering education.

The participating students and professors of the course entered the present study on collaboration and transprofessionalism. At DTU the course has provided a collaboration tool. The students could experience that collaboration can be improved. The traditional role distribution can be broken and generally a flat team structure, where decisions are made in consensus, can be induced.

The transprofessionalism during the course was appreciated but it was also described as a challenge. It is worthwhile to offer a multidisciplinary course and give engineering students experience in new collaboration methods.