The FP7 project improving Children's Auditory Rehabilitation (iCARE) is an international and interdisciplinary consortium from academia, industry and socio-economic agencies. One of the objectives of iCARE is to provide interdisciplinary training to create a new generation of researchers capable of exploiting the synergies between different disciplines, for the ultimate aim of improving children's (4-12 years old) auditory rehabilitation. Online training appears as the main solution to accomplish iCARE interdisciplinary training. The main objective of the current study is to design an educational model which could facilitate effective online interdisciplinary training to iCARE researchers. Due to the variety of interdisciplinary education contexts, there is not a widely accepted educational model yet. Critics of the interdisciplinary educational model design rise from the following aspects: i) Lack of theoretical support from learning and psychological background; ii) Poor instructional design such as lack of assessment methods or constructive alignment; iii) Lack of information to guide designing interventions. Learning the lessons from previous studies, we design the interdisciplinary education model for iCARE mainly based on Biggs' constructive alignment and we adjusted it into online interdisciplinary learning context. The iCARE interdisciplinary educational model we propose is composed of four parts: learning needs analysis, curriculum objectives, teaching/learning activities (TLA) and assessment tasks. Curriculum objectives functioning as the central part of the model are used to be systematically aligned with the TLA and the assessment tasks. Two steps are introduced to guide TLA design. The first step is to select the appropriate online learning method; the second step is to complete the pre-, the main and the post-activity design. The three-step design is based on the studies of acquisition of intellectual skills and development of expertise. Then, the feedback of TLA goes back to the curriculum objectives to make necessary adjustment. Assessment tasks are also applied in online context. Three steps are listed to design the assessment tasks: selecting the appropriate online assessment type, developing grading criteria of desired learning outcomes and making sure the holistic grading reflect how well a given student's level of performance meets the desired objectives. The feedback of assessment tasks goes back as well to the curriculum objectives to make necessary adjustment. This current study contributes to improving the knowledge of interdisciplinary education by providing an educational model with a strong theoretical background, and proposing guidelines for future interventions design in interdisciplinary education. We hope this study on a new learning scenario-online interdisciplinary education could contribute to the knowledge creation of the worlds of online learning.
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