How to make connections with other professional domains

Connecting with other domains is important in education because it enhances academic competence. It helps students look at their subject from different perspectives.

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Connecting with other domains is important in education, because it broadens students’ awareness and enhances academic competence. Students get first-hand experience with different perspectives. 

If you ask students to look at a problem from a different perspective, and introduce them to a multidisciplinary work setting, the students are stimulated to link different domains themselves and might come up with solutions that you, and they, never have thought of before.

Your role as a teacher is to guide them and ask them questions like:

  • How would a nurse approach this question?
  • Would a movie director look at the subject in the same way?

This video offers you some ideas to connect other domains with your own. They might be simple, but by thinking critically about your own lessons, looking “outside” to see what is happening in society and taking action to bring students in contact with other viewpoints, you could really enrich your lessons.

Questions for reflection

1. Where do you see possibilities to connect with other domains for your own classes?

2. What would a connection to another domain ideally look like?

3. What domains would increase the interest of students for your subject?

4. What ideas will your students have on cross connections with other domains?

5. What would you need to realize these cross connections?

6. How can you use your networks and the students’ networks to realize cross connections?


Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, the Netherlands


Amy Hill and Sylvia Erlings

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