Board 9: Work in Progress: Collaborative Learning to Develop Laboratory Modules that Support Knowledge Gain and Professional Development in a Biomedical Engineering Graduate Course

Marcia Pool; Rohit Bhargava; H. Rex Gaskins

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Conference: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Portland, Oregon
Publication Date: June 23, 2024
Start Date: June 23, 2024
End Date: July 12, 2024
Conference Session: Biomedical Engineering Division (BED) Poster Session
Tagged Division: Biomedical Engineering Division (BED)
Permanent URL: https://strategy.asee.org/48390

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Paper Authors

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Marcia Pool University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign orcid.org/0000-0002-2813-4217

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Dr. Marcia (“Marci”) Pool is the Assistant Director for Education at the Cancer Center at Illinois and a Teaching Associate Professor in Bioengineering. She holds a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering, has served for sixteen years as teaching faculty/staff in biomedical/bioengineering and nine years in departmental/institute educational administration, and is an ABET program evaluator for Bioengineering/Biomedical Engineering. She focuses on identifying and evaluating mechanisms to enhance the educational experience and develop students into engineers and researchers. Her work includes interventions to enhance training for high school students, undergraduate students, and predoctoral (graduate students) and postdoctoral trainees through training programs such as NIH T32s. These programs include curricular, extracurricular, and professional and career development components with required evaluation and tracking of student participants.

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Rohit Bhargava

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Rohit Bhargava is Bliss Faculty Scholar of Engineering and Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a faculty member with affiliations in several departments across campus (Primary â€“ Bioengineering: Affiliated - Electrical and

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H. Rex Gaskins University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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Abstract

With the exception of working as a teaching assistant, few opportunities exist to prepare graduate students for the teaching component in their future faculty careers. However, even if a graduate student serves as a teaching assistant, most experiences support existing, well established courses, and there is little opportunity to learn how to design and create material for a new course. Considering that many of the students in our course had few if any opportunities to serve as teaching assistants, the instructors saw an opportunity to address this training gap and create a project in the course to (1) strengthen student’s educational design skills, (2) utilize collaborative learning to support course relevant knowledge gain, and (3) develop laboratory modules to complement the existing lecture course. In spring 2022, the XXX XXX: Tissue Microenvironment course, associated with the XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX NIBIB T32 Training Program, was offered as before but with a new project. The new project focused on educational design and content development of a new laboratory course to complement XXX XXX. Nine students from four engineering disciplines enrolled and completed the course. The course consisted of scientific/technical lectures related to the tissue microenvironment, information on educational design from a teaching and learning specialist in the university’s teaching and learning center, a lecture/demonstration from a faculty member in the College of Education on use of augmented and virtual reality in education, and multiple project check-ins with instructors and peers. Students were asked to individually create a table of contents for a tissue microenvironment laboratory course. Then, students presented their ideas to instructors and peers, received feedback, and discussed general themes; from this process, one table of contents was created. Students created teams in which to design the laboratory modules based on their knowledge and interest. At the end of the semester, students delivered presentations of the final modules. Each module consisted of learning objectives, introduction/background information, materials and equipment list, a detailed protocol, and references. The instructors knew this would be an opportunity to support student’s career development but were unsure of the usability and relevant content that would be delivered in the final module. However, the students readily engaged and voiced opinions to shape the final content; they also worked well in interdisciplinary teams to iteratively redesign the modules based on feedback, refined their learning objectives, and contributed not only to their groups but to the class. The instructors were impressed with the outcomes and have incorporated the project into the course again in fall 2023 but with updates to address some areas of improvement. In this paper, we will describe what went well and areas of improvement for the process used, the connection between the project and the course, and the outcomes.

Citation
Format

Pool, M., & Bhargava, R., & Gaskins, H. R. (2024, June), Board 9: Work in Progress: Collaborative Learning to Develop Laboratory Modules that Support Knowledge Gain and Professional Development in a Biomedical Engineering Graduate Course Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://strategy.asee.org/48390

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - With the exception of working as a teaching assistant, few opportunities exist to prepare graduate students for the teaching component in their future faculty careers. However, even if a graduate student serves as a teaching assistant, most experiences support existing, well established courses, and there is little opportunity to learn how to design and create material for a new course. Considering that many of the students in our course had few if any opportunities to serve as teaching assistants, the instructors saw an opportunity to address this training gap and create a project in the course to (1) strengthen student’s educational design skills, (2) utilize collaborative learning to support course relevant knowledge gain, and (3) develop laboratory modules to complement the existing lecture course. In spring 2022, the XXX XXX: Tissue Microenvironment course, associated with the XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX NIBIB T32 Training Program, was offered as before but with a new project. The new project focused on educational design and content development of a new laboratory course to complement XXX XXX. Nine students from four engineering disciplines enrolled and completed the course. The course consisted of scientific/technical lectures related to the tissue microenvironment, information on educational design from a teaching and learning specialist in the university’s teaching and learning center, a lecture/demonstration from a faculty member in the College of Education on use of augmented and virtual reality in education, and multiple project check-ins with instructors and peers. Students were asked to individually create a table of contents for a tissue microenvironment laboratory course. Then, students presented their ideas to instructors and peers, received feedback, and discussed general themes; from this process, one table of contents was created. Students created teams in which to design the laboratory modules based on their knowledge and interest. At the end of the semester, students delivered presentations of the final modules. Each module consisted of learning objectives, introduction/background information, materials and equipment list, a detailed protocol, and references. The instructors knew this would be an opportunity to support student’s career development but were unsure of the usability and relevant content that would be delivered in the final module. However, the students readily engaged and voiced opinions to shape the final content; they also worked well in interdisciplinary teams to iteratively redesign the modules based on feedback, refined their learning objectives, and contributed not only to their groups but to the class. The instructors were impressed with the outcomes and have incorporated the project into the course again in fall 2023 but with updates to address some areas of improvement. In this paper, we will describe what went well and areas of improvement for the process used, the connection between the project and the course, and the outcomes. 
AU  - Marcia Pool
AU  - Rohit Bhargava
AU  - H. Rex Gaskins
CY  - Portland, Oregon
DA  - 2024/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Board 9: Work in Progress: Collaborative Learning to Develop Laboratory Modules that Support Knowledge Gain and Professional Development in a Biomedical Engineering Graduate Course
UR  - https://strategy.asee.org/48390
ER  -