London Interdisciplinary School (LIS)

Overview

OnePlanet is supporting Systems Thinking at the London Interdisciplinary School.

The London Interdisciplinary School (LIS) was founded in 2017 with a clear ambition: transforming higher education by focusing on real-world challenges with a problems-first, interdisciplinary approach. As the first UK university in over 50 years to gain degree-awarding powers from inception, LIS offers programmes that integrate sciences, arts, and humanities to address topics like climate change, inequality, and AI ethics.

Through partnerships with organisations such as the NHS, TfL, McKinsey, and the Gates Foundation, students engage with complex, real-world situations preparing graduates for resilient and equitable systems across sectors.

More info: Undergraduate, postgraduate and professional courses | LIS

Challenges

LIS sought a practical approach to make interdisciplinary thinking clear, teachable, and measurable. Staff at LIS believed that its problems-first approach would benefit from a platform for visualizing complexity, integrating disciplines, and consistently showing learning across programmes.

Interdisciplinary work was often implicit and hard to structure or assess within modular coursework lacking exams. As LIS expands, a shared platform would support collaboration, coaching, and tracking progress across cohorts, embedding systems thinking institution-wide instead of isolated experiences.

OnePlanet Solution

The partnership with LIS has delivered targeted interventions across multiple cohorts.

Mapping and Conceptual Tools for Interdisciplinarity

Undergraduate students gained hands-on experience mapping and visualising complex interdisciplinary projects on the OnePlanet platform, integrating Ash Brockwell’s mindshifts framework.

Capstone Projects

Final-year undergraduates used stakeholder mapping to identify real-world audiences, helping them move from academic study to practical application.  

Institution-Wide Integration across BASc, MBA, and MASc programmes, requiring platform customization for LIS, such as template libraries, assessment integration, coaching tools, and portfolio development.

OnePlanet helps students clearly see how the different parts of a complex system fit together — and, crucially, how that understanding can be applied in practice. Through real examples, like South Downs National Park, students could see how diverse actors within a community and ecosystem can work together. The published library of plans also showed that this isn’t just academic theory — it’s being used in real‑world contexts, including at a high policy level.

Dr. Ash Brockwell, Associate Professor London Interdisciplinary School.

Benefits and Return on Investment

The partnership shows that interdisciplinary education prepares students for real-world problems and uses technology to advance system-thinking beyond conventional methods.  

Pedagogical Alignment: LIS interdisciplinary, problem‑based learning.
Real‑World Readiness: LIS connects academic learning with professional practice.
Assessment Innovation: Platform assessments support skills‑based evaluation.