The Independent Study Period (ISP) is a distinctive academic experience at Ahmedabad University that gives students the opportunity to step outside their regular programmes and engage with questions beyond conventional disciplinary boundaries.

ISP courses bring together interdisciplinary thinking, academic inquiry, real-world challenges, and hands-on making. Each course is organised around a significant question or challenge and draws on knowledge and methods from multiple disciplines to explore it.

Students study a topic, build conceptual understanding, investigate a real-world problem, work collaboratively across disciplines, and apply their learning to create something meaningful. ISP is an intensive learning experience comprising classrooms, studios, laboratories, and field sites, wherein each space becomes a site for inquiry, experimentation, collaboration and making.

From learning to doing

Courses combine conceptual learning with workshops, fieldwork, experimentation, design, and project work. Depending on the challenge, students may work with technologies, data, physical materials, scientific methods, design tools, simulations, or other specialised approaches

This makes the learning iterative. Students investigate, make, test, receive feedback, rethink, and try again.

The outcome is therefore different for every course. It may be a prototype, a digital platform, a research output, a medical model, a design intervention, a public exhibition, or another form of work.

Interdisciplinary by design

Real-world challenges rarely fit within a single discipline. ISP brings students from different academic backgrounds together to explore shared questions, combining diverse knowledge, methods, and perspectives. Students learn not only from faculty and practitioners but also from peers who approach the same challenge differently.

Learning through real-world challenges

Each ISP course culminates in a substantive project or challenge that connects classroom learning with the world beyond it.

An intensive learning experience

ISP takes place during the University’s December academic period as an intensive 14-day experience, with 6–8 hours of engagement each day. Students work closely with faculty, practitioners, and peers in a concentrated format that enables immersive, hands-on learning beyond the conventional semester timetable.

Teach something that does not fit neatly into a discipline

We welcome faculty members and practitioners with ambitious interdisciplinary course ideas that combine intellectual depth with experimentation, collaboration, and making.

If you have an interdisciplinary course idea for the Independent Study Period, please contact Juhi Bansal, Co-Director, Centre for Learning Futures, at juhi.bansal@ahduni.edu.in.

ISP 2026 dates: December 10-24, 2026