TITLE: Advancing Evidence-based Biomedical Engineering Education in Real Time

Undergraduate biomedical engineering (BME) programs typically consist of courses from several different academic departments combined with BME-specific courses taught by faculty trained in a variety of disciplines. While some students embrace this diversity in courses and disciplinary perspectives, many struggle with how to translate these experiences into career opportunities. BME students are often concerned that they are perceived as a “jack of all trades, masters of none.” In 2016, the BME Department sought to find new ways to integrate BME professional practice into the curriculum.

Informed by organizational change theory, we asked: 1) Is there potential for change; 2) what strategies facilitate change; and 3) how can these strategies be implemented? As a result, we developed an Instructional Design Sequence, a new approach to instruction in which students, post docs, and faculty create short modules that use evidence-based teaching practices to expose BME students to BME professional practice.

This presentation describes how the Instructional Design Sequence was conceived and demonstrates how theory can be used to inform practice. The resultant Sequence is a transferrable model for transforming engineering education, offering a mechanism for integrating new career-relevant curriculum into undergraduate curriculum, while training future educators in evidence-based instructional practices.