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WIP: How Students Externalize Epistemologies: Describing How Students Explain, Ground, and Consciously Construct Their Definitions of Engineering and Biomedical Engineering

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Conference

2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Tampa, Florida

Publication Date

June 15, 2019

Start Date

June 15, 2019

End Date

June 19, 2019

Conference Session

ERM Technical Session

Tagged Division

Educational Research and Methods

Page Count

12

DOI

10.18260/1-2--33563

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/33563

Download Count

600

Paper Authors

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Cristi L. Bell-Huff Georgia Institute of Technology

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Cristi L. Bell-Huff, PhD is a Lecturer in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University where she is involved in teaching and engineering education innovation and research. In addition to her PhD in Chemical Engineering, she also has an MA in Educational Studies. She has industrial experience in pharmaceutical product and process development as well as teaching experience at the secondary and post-secondary levels.

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Todd M. Fernandez Georgia Institute of Technology

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Todd is a lecturer in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. His research interests are about engineering students beliefs about knowledge and their formation through the engineering education experience.

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Kali Lynn Morgan Georgia Institute of Technology

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Joseph M. LeDoux Georgia Institute of Technology

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Joe Le Doux is the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Learning and Experience in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. Dr. Le Doux's research interests in engineering education focus on problem-solving, diagrammatic reasoning, and on the socio-cognitive aspects of the flipped and blended learning environments.

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Abstract

In this work in progress paper we assess how first year engineering students’ definitions of engineering and biomedical engineering evolve during a semester-long first-year course. Our goal is to understand how biomedical engineering students develop a conscious socially constructed definition of two terms: engineering and biomedical engineering. This paper presents initial steps towards that goal using student reflections as a data source. We look at 110 reflections from 57 students enrolled in a first-year biomedical engineering course. Our initial findings show that through the course, students use more sophisticated forms of reflection when articulating their definition and that they increasingly reference designerly ideas as part of those definitions. Notably, both of those changes align with content in the introductory course. We end by discussing plans for ongoing work with this data set based on our initial findings.

Bell-Huff, C. L., & Fernandez, T. M., & Morgan, K. L., & LeDoux, J. M. (2019, June), WIP: How Students Externalize Epistemologies: Describing How Students Explain, Ground, and Consciously Construct Their Definitions of Engineering and Biomedical Engineering Paper presented at 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Tampa, Florida. 10.18260/1-2--33563

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