Every Fall and Spring semester, students from the College of Liberal and Fine Arts travel to Urbino, Italy, to participate in the COLFA Semester in Urbino. During the Spring semester, 2022, twenty-five students took part in a special interdisciplinary project called “This Is Our Classroom,” which provided opportunities for deeper engagement and collaboration as we traveled to various sites around Italy.
The program was designed to build upon the interests and strengths of students from an array of disciplines, from art history to global affairs, from music and art to linguistics and classics. We created five teams for students to choose from, ranging from “Charlemagne and the Standardization of Language and Music” to “The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation.” Each team presented their findings to the class before the four-day field trips to Rome, Florence, and Verona and Venice, and in break-out groups at key sites on the trips. At the end of the semester, each team gave a multimedia presentation of their project. Finally, all students recorded a brief reflective video about what “This Is Our Classroom” meant to them.
We wanted to share this experience with a wider audience, and to inspire others to create similar interdisciplinary programs. Our story map takes viewers on a virtual tour of many of the sites we studied and visited, especially through the eyes and voices of our students.