Hyperdisciplinary Courseware: A Means Of Integrating The Curriculum

1 This paper will discuss the development of hyperdisciplinary courseware: World-Wide Web (WWW)-based, tightly coupled, interdisciplinary courseware. It will also discuss the tools required to create hyperdisciplinary courseware, a ongoing effort at the United States Military Academy and other institutions to create hyperdisciplinary courseware, and the perceived advantages and disadvantages of the courseware. WWW-based hypermedia has the potential of interconnecting related courseware from different courses or different institutions in ways that were previously impossible. This provides for the explicit development of threads of learning, independent of departmental boundaries, within an institutional and potentially for seamless integration of course material across institutional boundaries. This is a fundamental and powerful change in how students learn. Previously, students completed a series of often loosely coupled courses that comprised the student’s undergraduate education. Synthesis of these different courses and course material was left as an exercise for the student. Hyperdisciplinary courseware solves this problem by tightly coupling courses in an orthogonal network-based framework. WWW-based hypermedia, with the development of the proper tools, could facilitate the development, coordination, and presentation of information across departmental boundaries. This will fundamentally change how students prepare and review course material outside of the classroom.