ROLE: Biomedical Engineering Thinking and Learning: The Challenge of Integrating Systems and Analytical Thinking

Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

Biomedical engineering (BME) could be called an exemplar interdiscipline. An evolving field which applies engineering methods to biomedical problems, BME has broken down historical disciplinary barriers traditionally existing between the life sciences and engineering. While BME research activities frequently result in clinical therapies and medical treatments for the public, the field remains intimately tied to the engineering disciplines. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that as a novel field, biomedical engineering learning poses special challenges. Bioengineers must integrate a broad base of knowledge from several disciplines including engineering, computer technology, and cell and molecular biology. They must apply quantitative, analytical methods and representations to systems understanding. The challenge for cognitive science, if it is to play a significant role in 21st century science and engineering education, is to understand the nature of thinking and practice in interdisciplines such as BME, to investigate the developmental trajectory of expertise building, and to discover the ways that learning in such communities of practice can best be supported. To begin this foundational work, we seek NSF funding from the ROLE Program to conduct an in-depth, proof-of-concept case study of BME research and pedagogical practices in two related contexts. The study objective is to discover the salient questions related to BME learning and practice that can guided future work in other interdisciplines while setting a framework for more general thinking about the extremely important issue of cognitive development across disciplinary and epistemological boundaries. This is a three-year project aimed at both providing a base-line understanding of the cognitive practices employed within this interdiscipline and developing Biomedial Education (BME) learning environments enriched through this understanding of expert practices. The study will use a mixed method approach of cognitive-historical analysis and observational/interview studies. The study will examine the development of cognitive practices employed in the creation and use of representation in the domain of biomedical engineering. The goal is to investigate how the design and use of representational systems or external forms of cognitive mediation support the development of this community and advance the understanding of BME scientists doing work in laboratories. Further, the study will chronicle and describe the work conducted in two cardiovascular laboratories associated with the NSF-funded Georgia Tech/Emory Center for Tissue Engineering (GTEC). The goal is to understand how scientists create representations in the context of their lab work, their meetings and their private musings, and how these coordinate between the material substances of their work and the underlying concepts, structures and processes. The study will also investigate how students/novices in the labs are apprenticed to the representational and methodological practices of the BME community. Implications from this study will be used to make recommendations for the two ERC-based educational programs, for the undergraduate BME program slated for fall 2001 at Georgia Tech and for the inaugural Georgia-Tech Emory joint Ph.D. program in biomedical engineering. These implications will inform the design and refinement of problems to be used in a year long introductory undergraduate BME course titled Problems in BME that uses a PBL approach. These problems and findings from the lab focused activities will be distributed to the cognitive science, engineering education and BME communities for others to use and build upon.