Abstract
BackgroundThe rapidly evolving discipline of biological and biomedical engineering requires adaptive instructional approaches that teach students to target and solve multi-pronged and ill-structured problems at the cutting edge of scientific research. Here we present a modular approach to designing a lab-based course in the emerging field of biofabrication and biological design, leading to a final capstone design project that requires students to formulate and test a hypothesis using the scientific method.ResultsStudents were assessed on a range of metrics designed to evaluate the format of the course, the efficacy of the format for teaching new topics and concepts, and the depth of the contribution this course made to students training for biological engineering careers. The evaluation showed that the problem-based format of the course was well suited to teaching students how to use the scientific method to investigate and uncover the fundamental biological design rules that govern the field of biofabrication.ConclusionsWe show that this approach is an efficient and effective method of translating emergent scientific principles from the lab bench to the classroom and training the next generation of biological and biomedical engineers for careers as researchers and industry practicians.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13036-016-0032-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
The rapidly evolving discipline of biological and biomedical engineering requires adaptive instructional approaches that teach students to target and solve multi-pronged and ill-structured problems at the cutting edge of scientific research
Considering 83 % of student indicated that the final project was the aspect of the course they were most looking forward to, it is not surprising that the metric assessing introduction to new topics and concepts showed a demonstrable increase over the semester between the midand end-course surveys
Some students indicated that learning new skills that are not a part of standard bioengineering curriculum, such as computer-aided design (CAD) design and 3D printing, was an important motivator driving enthusiasm regarding the final project
Summary
The rapidly evolving discipline of biological and biomedical engineering requires adaptive instructional approaches that teach students to target and solve multi-pronged and ill-structured problems at the cutting edge of scientific research. The traditional lecture-based approach of teaching a set curriculum, which focuses on solving well-structured problems, does not yield a skill set that is readily transferrable to engineering practice [1] This finding has inspired a widespread transition to project-based learning in core engineering classes [2]. In a discipline that is evolving as quickly as biomedical engineering, it is likely that an adaptive and inquiry-based approach that teaches the scientific method, in the context of cutting-edge biomedical research, will prove well suited to undergraduate education [10,11,12].
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