The term “interdisciplinary” sounds grand and glamorous, but what does it really mean to be an interdisciplinary student? This is something that I pondered upon since the start of my NTU-USP journey. Four years down the road, I can safely say that the exposure to an interdisciplinary curriculum has provided me with opportunities to apply knowledge from various fields in my current work. Upon graduation with a Bachelor’s in Communication Studies, I am currently pursuing a PhD under the Interdisciplinary Graduate Programme in NTU. My research focuses on the use of digital technologies such as virtual reality and video games to improve people’s self-perceptions and interpersonal interactions. Till date, I have had the opportunity to take up courses in various areas such as Psychology, Sociology, and virtual environment design. The thought of having to scale a steep learning curve appears rather daunting initially yet being able to gain knowledge in a new area can be a really fulfilling experience. Furthermore, this is crucial in achieving my research goal, which is to improve people’s self-perceptions and social experiences using digital technologies. This requires one to have an understanding on how people communicate with one another, while also knowing how to conceptualize and utilize current digital tools to achieve those goals. Over my four years in NTU-USP, there were various opportunities to discover how knowledge gathered across disciplines can be integrated to tackle different issues. For instance, I had the chance to work with a team from various disciplines on a qualitative research project during the Travel Overseas Programme for Scholars (TOPS) and that experience prompted me to ruminate upon the research topic through both the lenses of a Business and Social Sciences student. I also managed to incorporate some of the knowledge that I have gained from the NTU-USP classes such as Ethics and Error and Bias into my Final Year Project, which examined how players make moral decisions in video games and their subsequent intergroup perceptions after the game play. The various classes outside of my main field of study allowed me to have a better understanding about how people perceive others, as well as some of the moral considerations that people have when faced with ethical dilemmas. Altogether, those experiences helped me to better design the video game for the study and consider various perspectives that could influence the research findings. While the idea of being interdisciplinary might allow us to be more marketable and more knowledgeable, it is still crucial to be an expert in a particular field of interest. Being exposed to an interdisciplinary curriculum provides an icing on the cake by allowing us to extend our knowledge in various areas. This would be helpful, particularly when we are tackling certain issues such as improving intergroup perceptions, self-perceptions, and attitudes toward environmental issues, which might require more than just one area of knowledge in order to devise an intervention.
Submission by:
Koek Wei Jie Dominic, Class of 2020