Invited Presentation: To See the Whole Elephant; Finding Opportunities for Collaboration in Education

Education is most successful when students learn to jump the tracks – to bring together content from seemingly disparate fields to create a more coherent narrative about the world around them. Helping students make connections across academic disciplines, and between academia and the real world, is difficult for any teacher working in isolation. Collaboration with colleagues in other departments and with experts in other fields can broaden horizons for everyone involved in the process; yet competing demands on schedules, energy, and curricula make collaboration exceptionally difficult to achieve. Can we do a better job of aligning incentives and finding areas of mutual interest to enhance the likelihood of successful, sustainable collaboration?