Perspectives on Interdisciplinary Pedagogy.

A long-standing collaboration between interior design faculty and health sciences faculty at a university has allowed for innovation of course development by combining design principles and health in the study of end-of-life care. An honors seminar was designed using an interdisciplinary model. Instructors, students, and content were integrated on multidimensional levels. The course was co-taught by a team from the interior design and health disciplines. Interprofessional service learning became the framing pedagogy to augment clinical preparation of future health professionals. The innovative pedagogy was developed to engage honors students in community service learning through the vehicles of art and health. The course offered interdisciplinary didactic and experiential opportunities to explore the interrelatedness of content, form, and subject as a unifying aesthetic framework that focuses on end-of-life care. The interdisciplinary educational model took a humanistic approach to the artistic study of end-of-life care, incorporating the historical context of disease and illness as a subject matter and form in art. The successful integration of art and health allowed students to come to terms with the intangible experiences of the cycle of life, death and dying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]