Introduction

In this guide we briefly explain what an Interdisciplinary Lively Application Project (referred to hereafter as an ILAP) is, how ILAPs are developed and executed, and what considerations and strategies arise when developing and using ILAPs. While there are many perspectives and elements to consider, we include only the essentials here and leave the rest of the material for future articles.

An ILAP is a process that generates a product that drives a student learning experience. ILAPs are student group projects that are jointly authored by a faculty member from the Mathematical Sciences Department and a faculty member from a partner department. ILAPs can be used in the mathematics classroom, in the partner classroom, or in both to let students work on mathematical concepts within the context of another discipline. ILAPs help connect the curricula by taking applications and current methods from a using department and connecting them with the concepts and techniques in the mathematics curriculum. They also can be used to reach forward to preview ideas from applications that wait downstream or backward to connect current mathematical topics with ideas from applications that already have been studied.

ILAPs provide students with practice in the interdisciplinary threads of modeling in scenarios more realistic than those usually presented within the mathematics curriculum. Students engage in reasoning (within an applied context) and problem solving, use technology as a tool to enable analysis of complex situations, connect and integrate ideas from different curricula, engage in teamwork in problem solving, and learn how to communicate methods, conclusions, and recommendations.