Welcome to the U-M BME Instructional Incubator and BME-in-Practice Sequence Video.  We are so excited to share what we have been doing here at Michigan to encourage more hands on learning for our first and second year BME students.  We welcome your feedback!

Wow. Really enjoyed this video and learning about this project! It keeps engagement and active participation at its core. The co-creation of the course involving graduate students and faculty is even better. The professors learn more about engagement, the graduate students learn in order to teach, and then the undergrads profit from the early intro to BME.

Some questions. Who actually teaches the course? Is it co-taught by the professor and graduate students? How are these courses rated by the students in comparison to other courses? Do you have any data how many of the students who take these courses continue to take more in this field? Thanks for this great contribution which seems quite replicable in other institutions. 

Hi Joni - thanks for the thoughtful questions -- It has been a lot of fun conceiving of this project and implementing it.  In answer to your questions:

1.  Who actually teaches the course:  The course sequence has been offered for two years.  I have been the primary instructor.  During the first year, I had a great School of Education graduate student working with me as a Teaching Apprentice for the Incubator.  Then I was the mentor for the students that taught the BME-in-Practice Modules in the Winter term.  In year two, we started to explore how to integrate more faculty.  Again, I was the primary instructor.  For the BME-in-Practice Modules, two faculty from our department helped mentor the student teams that were teaching their modules.

2. How are these courses rated by students in comparison to other courses?  - So far, students have been very pleased with these courses as demonstrated by qualitative feedback we have been collecting.  Students have commented on their enthusiasm for working in small groups, working closely with faculty and graduate students, learning professional relevant skills etc.  We are in the process of coding all of the responses from the past two years now.  Since student teams are leading the courses, we have not be collecting the same quantitative teaching evaluations that you would see in a traditional course.  

3.  Data on students who take these courses and do they take more in this field? I'm not sure which students you are referring to, so I will address both.  Students that have taken then incubator are an interesting mix -- some have gone on to teaching positions in universities, some have gone into industry and others are still in their graduate programs.  The Incubator has helped exposed graduate students to non-academic career paths because of their instructional discovery process and for those that have wanted to go onto academics -t hey now have a portfolio of teaching materials.  Undergraduates that have taken the BME-in-Practice modules are commenting on how they are able to have a better understanding of which concentration they want to pursue and are finding it easier to get internships based on their experiences in the modules.

We have started to present some of our outcomes for graduate students at ASEE:

1. Handley, J., Huang-Saad, A., & Woodcock, C.S. Exploring biomedical engineering students self-raised motivations for engaging in instructional design.  American Society for Engineering Education: Annual Conference and Exposition. Salt Lake City, UT.  (2018)
2. Malaga, K., Nu, Chrono, & Huang-Saad, A.Y.  “Introduction to Neural Engineering:”  Design and Development of a BME-In-Practice Course through the BME Instructional Incubator.  American Society of Engineering Education – North Central Section Spring Conference 2018.  Akron, OH. (2018).

Thanks for your thoughtful questions and let me know if there is anything else I can explain.

Thanks for your very thoughtful replies!!!

Thank you for preparing and submitting your video and so for your very thoughtful responses to Joni Falk's questions. I want ask a technical question and the take the discussion in a different direction as it relates to the future of graduate education:

The technical question: Your video indicated that the majority of students who enroll in the one credit courses are women. What percentage of undergraduate engineering students are women?

The different direction: As a former member of the staff of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine I was able to work on a study that led to the 2018 report, Graduate STEM Education for the 21^st Century [available for free download by clicking on the link]. Many components of your initiative are completely consistent with the recommendations in that report and it appears from your preliminary data that graduate students as well as other faculty and undergraduates are benefitting in various ways. My question is how your work in this project might be serving as a catalyst for changing graduate education in engineering and perhaps other fields at the University of Michigan. Is anyone who has the capacity for influencing systematic change paying attention? Are other innovations taking place in graduate education in engineering at Michigan?

Hi Jay

Thanks for your thoughtful insights — in response to your technical question, the percentage of women enrolled in engineering at U of M is approximately 27% as of Fall 2018.

Thanks for recognizing that this program meets several different needs in higher educatiom for both undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty.  In fact, the idea was conceived when our department was seeking to revolutionize engineering education using organizational change theory. We systematically interviewed faculty, students, alumni, and industry partners to learn more about the needs and problems.  The solution was designed to address those needs.  So far, people in the college are enthusiastic of the potential — I have begun introducing the concept to other departments in the College and am starting to work with my colleagues to find ways to scale the program.  We are so excited for the potential.

Thanks for your questions.

Aileen

I agree with Jay, this kind of professional collaboration across different levels of teaching and learning has so many benefits. It is a great example that should spread to other courses and departments. How time intensive is it to get such a collaboration off the ground and working, and course segments lead by students actually ready to go?

Hello All! My name is Ivory Toldson, professor at Howard University, president of Quality Education for Minorities, and one of the facilitators for the STEM for All Video Showcase. The conversation is off to a great start and I will be chiming in with my own input this afternoon and over the next few days. I'm excited about what we can achieve for the next generation of STEM learners!

Sweet!  This approach is both fresh and meaningful for students. 

Thank you for this video. Entering the project, were you anticipating such a large involvement from female students? Is there evidence that their involvement at the earlier levels of their education leads to greater involvement at more advanced levels? What other observations have you made that you were not anticipating?

The idea of pairing instructional design for faculty, grad students, post-docs, and upper-level undergraduates with the design and teaching of an incubator course is excellent -- as is the mix of participants. I was able to observe at James Madison the construction of incubator courses, but the preparation of those occurred in the summer and only involved the faculty who were to teach. Their incubator courses, however, were very interdisciplinary -- e.g., biology, art, engineering, and history. I wonder if you have thought about including faculty from disciplines outside of STEM, for example artists or economists? The outcomes of the design process and teaching might be richer.

Congratulations Aileen to you and all your collaborators on this work! I love the model of developing fresh "BME in Practice" modules each fall then teaching them in winter, and doing it with low stakes 1 credit courses avoids many of the usual constraints which surround courses in the traditional curriculum. I'd love to get your thoughts about how we might translate this model to other programs across the disciplines.