A Multiple-Perspective Analysis of Doctoral Interdisciplinarity

Interdisciplinary and assessment initiatives are two parallel educational paradigms that are being increasingly implemented in higher education institutions. Our study combines these two paradigms in order to assess the significance and performance of factors and processes that facilitate interdisci-plinarity at the doctoral level. Using the 360-degree feedback methodology, we integrate the perspectives of different academic stakeholders in the assessment, namely students, post-doctoral researchers, professors, directors, visiting professors and research funding agencies. Therefore, this study not only provides a global assessment but also informative intermediate results, such as analyses on the alignment and discrepancies of stakeholders as well as the identification of priorities for improvement. This paper presents the development and implementation of this multiple-perspective assessment within an academic context and discusses the results of its application in a European faculty of computer science where several doctoral programs with different approaches to interdisciplinarity co-exist.