Cooperative Work among Computer Engineering and Health Sciences Undergraduates: A Case Study

This work describes an interdisciplinary experience carried out with computer engineering and health sciences (nursing) students. The objective of the experience was to improve the ability of engineering students to interact with professionals from other fields and to increase the ability of nursing students to make decisions related to new technologies within their professional field. The study involved nine groups of between four and six students with equal numbers of engineering and nursing students in each group. The students of each group worked together to solve problems put forward by nursing professors. The study involved 3 of engineering professors and 3 of nursing professors. The outcome of the experience was assessed by a satisfaction questionnaire and by the results obtained after evaluating the students. It was concluded that there was an improvement in skills of both the nursing and computer engineering students. Furthermore, through social network analysis, it was possible to observe an increase in the communications among the interdisciplinary groups as proposed at the beginning of the study.

Automated summary

Through interdisciplinary collaboration, the skills of both engineering and nursing students were improved, and an increase in communication among interdisciplinary groups was observed.