Students' Attitudes Toward Interdisciplinary Learning: A High-School Course on Solar Cells

Due to the lingering lack of engineers in the Western world, universities are trying to attract candidates for undergraduate engineering programs through a variety of educational activities. One of the topics at the center of this effort is renewable energy in general and solar energy in particular. Recently, a unique 20-hour interdisciplinary course on solar cells was developed. This course, combining sustainability, physics and electronics, was designed to expose twelfth-grade students with appropriate backgrounds to advanced technological applications of theoretical physics in the context of renewable energy and to arouse interest in them. The aim of the research described here was to characterize students' attitudes toward interdisciplinary learning that combines science and engineering in general and toward the course in particular. The study, which used quantitative and qualitative tools, involved 27 Israeli twelfth-grade students majoring in physics. The findings indicate that the course graduates hold positive attitudes toward interdisciplinary learning, both cognitively and affectively, and that the correlation between the attitude components is positive, moderate and significant. The students believe that the integration of science and engineering is natural, as it reflects reality. In addition, they argue that the combination is interesting and improves the understanding of the disciplinary content. As for the course itself, students claim that it is important, arouses interest, and enriches knowledge, but is also characterized by a high cognitive load.