This course explores transdisciplinary intelligence — the capacity to understand and collaborate in knowledge production and exchange with multiple experts and publics beyond a single field. We begin with a survey of the key cultural differences among disciplines, then build the skills and capabilities needed for successful collaboration and professional boundary-crossing, all through historical exemplars of transdisciplinary intelligence.
Who it’s for
Professionals, researchers, and teams who work across disciplines — anyone who needs to collaborate, translate knowledge, and create value beyond a single field of expertise.
What you’ll learn
By the end of this apprenticeship, you’ll be able to:
- Engage with the current trends, discourses, methods, and applications of transdisciplinarity.
- Thrive within diverse professional environments.
- Understand, bridge, and translate knowledge between different disciplines and industries.
How it works
The apprenticeship is built on proven learning principles:
- Chunking — knowledge divided into graspable pieces.
- Primacy — what’s presented first is remembered more easily.
- Recency — what’s presented last is also remembered more easily.
- Intensity — examples that connect to emotions and real life work better.
- Freedom — self-directed activities reinforce motivation and learning.
Each module follows the same arc:
- Presentation of a first historical exemplar.
- Initial assessment to reveal previous knowledge and biases.
- Interactive connection of concepts and skills to the first exemplar.
- Presentation of a second historical exemplar.
- Iterative knowledge-check across both exemplars (a “quiz”).
- Summary of knowledge.
- A call to action — an implementation activity in real life (a “homework assignment”).
- Reflection and report on the activity (a day later).
Exemplars are chosen not only for historical and thematic relevance, but also for diversified disciplinary and national representation, and gender parity. Each module takes about 30 minutes at the start of a learning week; the rest of the week is for trying out the activities and writing a short reflection to close the module.
For teams
Enroll a cohort or request a custom version tailored to your organization. Team training →
