I thought adding theory would create barriers. Instead, it removed them.

Dr. Kristen Alley Swain, an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrated Marketing Communications at UM, was a member of the 2024-2025 Inclusive Teaching Learning Community. In this guest blog post, she shares a reflection on how adding theory boosted students’ performance and empowered greater understanding.

I stared at my Fall 2025 roster for IMC 585-Health Communication. There were undergraduate and graduate students from IMC, pre-med and pre-dental, pre-veterinary medicine, nutrition, psychology, occupational therapy, and public health. They’d all be taking my seven-week compressed online course together, and I just decided to add 16 theory chapters to an already intense syllabus.

What was I thinking? Wouldn’t theoretical frameworks overwhelm students from non-academic backgrounds? Surely, the allied health majors who needed practical skills would resent being asked to master Social Cognitive Theory, Health Belief Model, and the Extended Parallel Process Model. I wondered if I was about to tank my course evaluations and widen the performance gaps I’d been trying to close.

Instead, something unexpected happened. Performance gaps across disciplines narrowed. Students from non-communication backgrounds suddenly spoke as confidently about health communication competencies as the IMC majors. I feared the emphasis on theory would confuse my students. But somehow, it empowered them.

In Fall 2024, I noticed equity issues. Students entered with vastly different backgrounds from over a dozen disciplines. Some had clinical knowledge but no communication training. Others had media skills but no health background. I realized that my course design was inadvertently creating barriers across disciplines.

Assignments to produce health communication content – like logos, public service announcements, brochures, social media posts – privileged IMC students and others with existing professional writing and design skills. There were also hidden curriculum assumptions, like knowing how to translate coursework into real-world credentials, which disadvantaged first-generation students. And without a shared conceptual foundation, students from different disciplines struggled to learn from each other’s perspectives.

So, how could I create conditions where an IMC major, a future physician assistant, and an occupational therapy student could all succeed in the same course? I realized the problem wasn’t too much diversity. It was too little shared structure for navigating that diversity. I made a decision that felt risky. Instead of simplifying, I’d add more theoretical rigor but scaffold it carefully.

I switched textbooks from a focus on practical skills to one emphasizing theoretical foundations. I added 16 theory chapters across all seven modules, from foundational frameworks to complex behavior change models. I required explicit theory application in every assignment. I created weekly low-stakes (open-book, retakeable) quizzes for formative assessment. 

I built progressive complexity into the course, using Bloom’s taxonomy (understand → apply → analyze → synthesize). I also scaffolded deliberately. Students were exposed to each theory several times. They read about it, took quizzes, watched peer videos, applied it in discussions posts, and applied it in assignments. Graduate students created theory presentation videos for peer teaching and included examples showing what strong theory application looks like.

I started with the idea that theory provides common language across disciplines. It’s a framework anyone can learn, regardless of background. It reveals why messages work, not just how, and that understanding transfers across different careers and situations. As I explained to my students, “Theory isn’t an additional burden on top of learning health communication. Theory is the foundation that makes health communication accessible to everyone.”

The evidence surprised me. Theory citations in student work jumped, performance gaps between disciplines narrowed, and no single major dominated discussions. Everyone contributed meaningful ideas. All students articulated at least three specific professional competencies they gained and how they planned to apply these new competencies in their future careers. 

Students from fields that don’t traditionally see themselves as “communicators” developed strong professional identities as health communicators. Students didn’t just tolerate theory. They sought out more examples and referenced theories unprompted in discussion posts. One student reflected, “Being able to cite specific theories in my memo made me sound like I knew what I was talking about, because I actually did.” 

I identified three reasons theory can function as an equalizer. 

1. It creates common ground without privileging any discipline. In interdisciplinary courses, there’s no “average student.” You can’t simplify to find the middle. Instead, provide robust conceptual frameworks that everyone can access, then let students apply them through their unique disciplinary lenses. 
2. Explicit structure reduces hidden curriculum. I made theoretical application visible and less abstract by using rubrics, templates, and examples. Then students from all backgrounds could see what success looks like. Non-communication majors understood how to demonstrate strategic thinking without prior skills training.
3. Shared vocabulary enables interdisciplinary learning. Theory gave students a common language to learn from each other. When an IMC student and an occupational therapy candidate both understood the Health Belief Model, they could have a genuine dialogue about how perceived barriers affect behavior change. One talked about media campaigns, while the other applied it to patient compliance.

If you teach interdisciplinary courses, here’s what I learned:

1. Choose frameworks strategically. Select theories that are accessible across disciplines, not jargon-heavy or too field-specific. 
2. Build the complexity progressively. Give students low-stakes exposures to the theory before applying it. Open-book quizzes remove memorization anxiety, and peer teaching distributes cognitive load.
3. Make pathways to success clearer. Provide step-by-step demonstrations of how to apply theory in practical ways. Create explicit rubrics and templates to reduce cognitive burden.
4. Position diversity as an asset. Tell students, “Everyone here is an expert in something.” Structure the discussions to require cross-disciplinary dialogue.
5. Ask the equity question constantly. With every design decision, “Will this reduce or increase gaps between students from different backgrounds?”

Theory gave students a shared vocabulary to talk about how to promote behavior change more effectively. It helped students from public health and medical professions see health communication as central to their future work. It moved some students from feeling, “I don’t belong in this course” to “I have something unique to contribute.”

Sometimes the solution to inequity isn’t removing complexity. It’s providing better tools for navigating it. And sometimes, the most practical thing you can teach is a good theory.

In interdisciplinary courses, shared conceptual frameworks provide common ground accessible to all students, regardless of disciplinary background.