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

劳动力准备生物医学工程师的形成要求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面对医疗成本上升、平均预期寿命下降、健康结果的社会经济差异增加的环境中的挑战。这些和其他当代问题的解决方案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。工程设计过程为大挑战所需的开放式问题解决类型提供了一个框架。工程教育研究者对批判性思维技能的发展以及这些技能在设计过程中的应用进行了深入的研究；这项工作为旨在提高工程本科生批判性思维的教学技术提供了信息。很少有人研究个人技能发展在学生设计成就中的作用；然而，对学生自我效能感（信心）的大量研究表明，大一新生的工程保留和工程坚持的性别差异。本研究将对自信在生物医学工程本科生设计成就中的作用提供新的见解。随着学生在城市健康-生命科学校园中通过严格的、多学科的、性别多样化的生物医学工程项目，已经制定了调查和标准来跟踪设计信心和能力。这项研究的结果将为教学技术的发展、教育工作者的培训和工作场所的专业发展提供参考。这些影响是相关的，并且可以跨学科和机构转移。生物医学工程专业一直将第二高的工程学士学位授予女性，从而产生了一个性别多样化的工程学生群体。针对生物医学工程专业学生群体的学科研究将为工程教育工作者提供有关学生自我效能障碍的知识，这些障碍可能会限制设计的成功。运用混合方法的方法，班杜拉定义的自我效能感的社会认知理论结构将被用来调查以下中心研究问题：在课程中持续接触动手设计项目对生物医学工程学生的自我效能感和设计表现的影响程度和方式是什么？定量方法将具体告知以下问题：1)生物医学工程专业的学生在不断面临生物医学设计情境的挑战时，是否报告了自我效能感的变化？2)自我效能感与生物医学工程专业学生设计成绩是否相关？第三个问题(3)生物医学工程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，将指导定性调查和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，为技术教师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样化和有能力的STEM劳动力高度相关。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识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.