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

角色：生物医学工程思维和学习：集成系统和分析思维的挑战

• 批准号: 0106773
• 负责人: Nancy Nersessian
• 金额: $ 54.23万
• 依托单位: Georgia Tech Research Corporation
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2001
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2001-08-01 至 2004-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0106773&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: ROLE; Biomedical; Engineering; Thinking; Learning

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.

生物医学工程(BME)堪称交叉学科的典范。BME是一个将工程方法应用于生物医学问题的不断发展的领域，它打破了传统上存在于生命科学和工程学之间的学科障碍。虽然BME研究活动经常为公众带来临床治疗和医疗治疗，但该领域仍然与工程学科密切相关。因此，作为一个新领域，生物医学工程学习带来了特殊的挑战，这并不令人惊讶。生物工程师必须整合几个学科的广泛基础知识，包括工程学、计算机技术以及细胞和分子生物学。他们必须应用定量的、分析的方法和表述来理解系统。认知科学如果要在21世纪的科学和工程教育中发挥重要作用，面临的挑战是理解BME等跨学科的思维和实践的本质，调查专业知识建设的发展轨迹，并发现在这种实践社区中学习的最佳支持方式。为了开始这项基础性工作，我们从角色计划中寻求NSF的资金，以在两个相关的背景下对BME研究和教学实践进行深入的、概念验证的案例研究。这项研究的目标是发现与BME学习和实践相关的突出问题，这些问题可以指导其他跨学科的未来工作，同时为更广泛地思考跨学科和认识论边界的认知发展这一极其重要的问题建立一个框架。这是一个为期三年的项目，旨在提供对该跨学科中采用的认知实践的基本理解，并通过对专家实践的理解来丰富生物医学教育(BME)学习环境。本研究将采用认知-历史分析和观察/访谈相结合的研究方法。这项研究将考察在生物医学工程领域中创造和使用表征的认知实践的发展。其目标是调查表征系统或外部形式的认知调解的设计和使用如何支持这个社区的发展，并促进BME科学家在实验室工作的理解。此外，这项研究将记录和描述与美国国家科学基金会资助的佐治亚理工学院/埃默里组织工程中心(GTEC)相关的两个心血管实验室进行的工作。其目标是了解科学家如何在他们的实验室工作、他们的会议和他们的私人思考的背景下创造表征，以及这些如何在他们工作的物质物质和潜在的概念、结构和过程之间协调。这项研究还将调查实验室中的学生/新手如何接受BME社区的代表性和方法论实践。这项研究的影响将被用来为两个基于ERC的教育计划、佐治亚理工学院定于2001年秋季举行的本科生BME计划以及佐治亚理工学院与埃默里理工学院在生物医学工程方面的首届联合博士计划提出建议。这些影响将为设计和改进将在为期一年的BME本科生入门课程中使用的问题提供信息，该课程名为使用PBL方法的BME问题。这些以实验室为重点的活动中的问题和发现将分发给认知科学、工程教育和BME社区，供其他人使用和建立。