Conference Session

Communication and Professional Skills in BME

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Donna Ebenstein, Bucknell University; Joe Tranquillo; Daniel Cavanagh

Tagged Divisions

Biomedical

valuable in seniordesign. The first course, taken in the spring of junior year, is aimed at introducing students to awide range of ‘soft’ skills including regulatory issues, teamwork, environmental impacts, andformal decision making. Students then take a course in the fall of the senior year that focuses ondeveloping relevant ‘hard’ skills including CAD, machining tools, rapid-prototyping,mammalian cell culture, and statistics-based experimental design. The other two courses of thissequence make up the two-semester senior design capstone experience that follows a traditionalproject based model. However, in addition to in-depth exposure to the formal engineering designprocess, students are also required to interact professionally with an external

Conference Session

BME Assessment and the VaNTH ERC

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Mary Verstraete, University of Akron

Tagged Divisions

Biomedical

metric, or metrics, in mind for measuring the level of success orfailure, such as examination or homework questions, or project requirements. Course Objectivesand Outcomes should then be included in the course syllabus distributed to each student on thefirst day of class (Figure 1).At the completion of the course, each instructor completes an assessment report for each BMEcourse they taught. The report includes the following sections; Heading, Catalog Description,Grade Distribution, Modifications Made to Course, Course Outcomes Assessment, StudentFeedback, Reflection, Proposed Actions for Course Improvement. Other sections may beincluded as each instructor or the Department wishes. These extra sections may be used toassess the “soft” skills