| NSF Org: |
EEC Div Of Engineering Education and Centers |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 9, 2019 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | August 9, 2019 |
| Award Number: | 1927150 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Jumoke Ladeji-Osias
jladejio@nsf.gov (703)292-7708 EEC Div Of Engineering Education and Centers ENG Directorate For Engineering |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2019 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2022 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $200,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $200,000.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
107 S INDIANA AVE BLOOMINGTON IN US 47405-7000 (317)278-3473 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
723 West Michigan Street SL220 Indianapolis IN US 46202-5191 |
| Primary Place of Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| NSF Program(s): | EngEd-Engineering Education |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.041 |
ABSTRACT
The formation of workforce-ready biomedical engineers requires that students are prepared to confidently approach complex problems. In the United States, biomedical engineers will need to confront challenges in an environment of rising healthcare costs, decreasing average life expectancy, and increasing socioeconomic disparities in health outcomes. Solutions to these and other contemporary problems will require new and innovative medical technologies, suggesting that the future of biomedical engineering will be increasingly design-oriented. The engineering design process provides a framework for the type of open-ended problem solving required by grand challenges. The development of critical thinking skills and application of these skills toward the design process have been studied thoroughly by engineering education researchers; this work has informed instructional techniques aimed at improving critical thinking among engineering undergraduates. Much less has been done to investigate the role of intrapersonal skill development in student design achievement; however, substantial research on student self-efficacy (confidence) has informed freshman engineering retention and gender gaps in engineering perseverance. This research will provide new insights into the role of self-confidence in design achievement among biomedical engineering undergraduates. Surveys and rubrics have been developed to track design confidence and abilities as students progress through a rigorous, multi-disciplinary, and gender-diverse biomedical engineering program on an urban health-life sciences campus. Results from this study will inform development of instructional techniques, educator training, and workplace professional development. These impacts are relevant and transferable across disciplines and institutions.
Biomedical engineering programs have consistently awarded the second highest number of engineering bachelor's degrees to women, yielding a gender-diverse engineering student population from which to learn. Discipline-specific research of a biomedical engineering student population would provide engineering educators knowledge of student self-efficacy barriers that may limit design success. Applying a mixed-methods approach, the social cognitive theory construct of self-efficacy defined by Bandura will be used to investigate the following central research question: To what extent and in what ways does continuous exposure to hands-on design projects throughout a curriculum influence self-efficacy and design performance of biomedical engineering students? Quantitative methods will specifically inform the questions 1) Do biomedical engineering students report changes in self-efficacy when continuously challenged with biomedical design situations? and 2) Does self-efficacy relate to biomedical engineering student design achievement? A third question 3) How do biomedical engineering students describe their self-efficacy toward biomedical design throughout a curriculum will guide qualitative inquiry and shape efforts to describe mediating variables. Finally, this work will demonstrate the approachability and utility of social science research for technical faculty looking to improve engineering formation processes. Application of the self-efficacy framework to engineering design education is highly relevant to the training of a diverse and competent STEM workforce.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
In the engineering classroom and workplace, self-efficacy is an inferred skill. Research focused on identifying how self-efficacy relates to engineering design achievement can provide a basis for intentional and effective improvements to engineering curricula, educator training, and workplace professional development. The multidisciplinary field of biomedical engineering presents a gender-diverse STEM population to serve as a model for such engineering education research. This research project establishes needed discipline-based knowledge on how biomedical engineering students describe their sources self-efficacy toward engineering design, which may help educators and employers understand barriers to student or employee success. Further, this work aims to understand the impact of curricular design experiences on the design self-efficacy of undergraduate biomedical engineering students. Applying the social cognitive theory framework of Bandura, our central research question asks: To what extent and in what ways does continuous exposure to hands-on biomedical design projects throughout a curriculum influence self-efficacy and design performance of biomedical engineering students?
Our work studied a population of biomedical engineering students (n=201, 46% male, 54% female) that experienced four hands-on design projects over two years within an undergraduate curriculum. Our qualitative results indicate student-identified courses, skills, and topics that best prepare them for design project work. These results can help biomedical engineering educators when designing team-based projects that build upon the technical knowledge and skills identified by students. Additionally, our work highlights how students more frequently identify social persuasions as encouragements rather than discouragements and which emotional states students report as affecting their abilities toward design. Importantly, students identified external factors, such as home-life circumstances, course delivery mode, and limited technology resources, as most affecting their ability to contribute toward their project work. Specifically, we captured an increased effect on student emotional state during the first semester of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a validated quantitative instrument to measure design self-efficacy, our results demonstrate that hands-on curricular interventions significantly increase design self-efficacy when implemented throughout an undergraduate biomedical engineering program. Taken together, these results provide others a basis for the development of improved instructional techniques and training by providing insight to the hands-on, team-based activities that can augment engineering design self-efficacy of a gender-diverse undergraduate population.
Finally, we developed and disseminated an organized professional development plan to acquire knowledge and build skills toward becoming independent researchers in the field of engineering education. Our targeted areas for learning and development included social science research in design education, mixed methods research, and evidence-based teaching. We identified mentors in each of these three areas, and we consulted with the mentors both for directed professional development activities and for guidance toward our study on biomedical engineering design self-efficacy. The research knowledge and skills gained during this work led us to several opportunities to collaborate with other educators and education researchers, and we applied our gained engineering education research skills toward the publishing of 11 total peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers (4 of which were directly related to this project). In addition, we have five manuscripts and one conference abstract in progress and have contributed to several internal and external grants as PIs or co-PIs. Our professional development strategy and experiences as new engineering education researchers establish guideposts for other engineering educators who aim to undertake similar career transitions.
Last Modified: 12/06/2022
Modified by: Sharon Miller
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