Research Initiation: A Study of Biomedical Engineering Student Self-Efficacy Toward Design

劳动力准备的生物医学工程师的形成需要学生准备自信地处理复杂的问题。在美国，生物医学工程师将需要在医疗成本上升、平均预期寿命下降和健康结果的社会经济差异增加的环境中面临挑战。解决这些和其他当代问题将需要新的和创新的医疗技术，这表明生物医学工程的未来将越来越以设计为导向。工程设计过程为解决重大挑战所需的开放式问题提供了一个框架。批判性思维技能的发展和应用这些技能对设计过程中已经深入研究了工程教育研究人员，这项工作已经通知教学技术，旨在提高工程本科生的批判性思维。更少已经做了调查的作用，在学生的设计成就的自我技能的发展，然而，大量的研究，学生的自我效能（信心）通知新生工程保留和性别差距，在工程毅力。本研究将为生物医学工程专业本科生的自信心在设计成就中的作用提供新的见解。已经开发了调查和标题，以跟踪设计的信心和能力，学生通过一个严格的，多学科的，和性别多样化的生物医学工程计划在城市健康生命科学校园的进展。本研究的结果将为教学技术、教育者培训和工作场所专业发展提供信息。这些影响是相关的，并可跨学科和机构转移。生物医学工程课程一直是授予女性工程学士学位数量第二多的课程，产生了性别多样化的工程学生群体。生物医学工程专业学生群体的生物医学特定研究将为工程教育工作者提供可能限制设计成功的学生自我效能障碍的知识。应用混合方法的方法，社会认知理论构建的自我效能定义的班杜拉将被用来调查以下中心的研究问题：在何种程度上，以何种方式不断接触动手设计项目在整个课程的影响自我效能和设计表现的生物医学工程专业的学生？定量方法将具体告知问题1）生物医学工程专业的学生报告自我效能的变化时，不断挑战生物医学设计的情况？自我效能感与生物医学工程专业学生的设计成绩是否相关？第三个问题3）生物医学工程专业的学生如何在整个课程中描述他们对生物医学设计的自我效能感，这将指导定性调查，并塑造描述中介变量的努力。最后，这项工作将展示社会科学研究的可接近性和实用性，为技术人员寻求改善工程形成过程。自我效能框架在工程设计教育中的应用与培养多元化、有能力的STEM劳动力高度相关。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The formation of workforce-ready biomedical engineers requires that students are prepared to confidently approach complex problems. In the United States, biomedical engineers will need to confront challenges in an environment of rising healthcare costs, decreasing average life expectancy, and increasing socioeconomic disparities in health outcomes. Solutions to these and other contemporary problems will require new and innovative medical technologies, suggesting that the future of biomedical engineering will be increasingly design-oriented. The engineering design process provides a framework for the type of open-ended problem solving required by grand challenges. The development of critical thinking skills and application of these skills toward the design process have been studied thoroughly by engineering education researchers; this work has informed instructional techniques aimed at improving critical thinking among engineering undergraduates. Much less has been done to investigate the role of intrapersonal skill development in student design achievement; however, substantial research on student self-efficacy (confidence) has informed freshman engineering retention and gender gaps in engineering perseverance. This research will provide new insights into the role of self-confidence in design achievement among biomedical engineering undergraduates. Surveys and rubrics have been developed to track design confidence and abilities as students progress through a rigorous, multi-disciplinary, and gender-diverse biomedical engineering program on an urban health-life sciences campus. Results from this study will inform development of instructional techniques, educator training, and workplace professional development. These impacts are relevant and transferable across disciplines and institutions.Biomedical engineering programs have consistently awarded the second highest number of engineering bachelor's degrees to women, yielding a gender-diverse engineering student population from which to learn. Discipline-specific research of a biomedical engineering student population would provide engineering educators knowledge of student self-efficacy barriers that may limit design success. Applying a mixed-methods approach, the social cognitive theory construct of self-efficacy defined by Bandura will be used to investigate the following central research question: To what extent and in what ways does continuous exposure to hands-on design projects throughout a curriculum influence self-efficacy and design performance of biomedical engineering students? Quantitative methods will specifically inform the questions 1) Do biomedical engineering students report changes in self-efficacy when continuously challenged with biomedical design situations? and 2) Does self-efficacy relate to biomedical engineering student design achievement? A third question 3) How do biomedical engineering students describe their self-efficacy toward biomedical design throughout a curriculum will guide qualitative inquiry and shape efforts to describe mediating variables. Finally, this work will demonstrate the approachability and utility of social science research for technical faculty looking to improve engineering formation processes. Application of the self-efficacy framework to engineering design education is highly relevant to the training of a diverse and competent STEM workforce.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.