These two presenters were not looking for a project but were chatting one day about their courses and how to get students to improve their inquiry skills and create an innovative collaborative learning experience for students in two courses: Fatherhood and Substance Abuse and Human Behavior.

In the first year to the two devised a mini conference for their students but they did all the work. In the second year they decided the students should take ownership of the conference and so they got them to organise this.

Day One

There were rotation stations where students brought in cases for each other to work on. In the afternoon they were put in interdisciplinary groups to share their research and in the evening they showed a film.

Day Two

The students in groups discussed the film they had seen around some questions set by the presenters. After this they then had a community panel where there were people brought in appropriate to both courses so a recovering father who had been on drugs, an adult whose father had been a drug user, someone from social services, a police officer and someone from a drug programme.

The two presenters felt this had been much better and students had worked hard but they were surprised they had chosen to have a film in the evening using their own time and felt that next time they would not have this.

They evaluated this from the students perspective through course evaluations, mini conference evaluations, a course design group, peer consultation and faculty peer-led focus groups. They also asked students one year on what they remembered, what should be kept and what to throw out.

The results were the students wanted the movie kept, all the readings they did should stay and the speakers and, they enjoyed working with others in class but they felt the interdisciplinary connections were contrived.

Moving forward the speakers have continued to develop this and have undertaken a writing retreat to write this project up. One presenter is also involved in another collaboration.