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

生物医学工程（BME）可以被称为一个典型的跨学科。生物医学工程是应用工程方法解决生物医学问题的一个不断发展的领域，它打破了生命科学与工程之间传统存在的历史学科障碍。虽然BME研究活动经常为公众带来临床治疗和医学治疗，但该领域仍然与工程学科密切相关。因此，毫不奇怪，作为一个新领域，生物医学工程的学习带来了特殊的挑战。生物工程师必须整合多个学科的广泛知识基础，包括工程、计算机技术、细胞和分子生物学。他们必须运用定量的分析方法和表征来理解系统。认知科学要想在21世纪的科学和工程教育中发挥重要作用，它所面临的挑战是理解像BME这样的跨学科思维和实践的本质，研究专业知识建设的发展轨迹，并发现在这样的实践社区中学习的最佳支持方式。为了开始这项基础工作，我们从角色计划中寻求国家科学基金会的资助，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案例研究。研究目标是发现与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，同时为跨学科和认识论边界的认知发展这一极其重要的问题提供一个更普遍的思考框架。这是一个为期三年的项目，旨在提供对这一跨学科中所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）的学习环境。本研究将采用认知历史分析和观察/访谈研究的混合方法。本研究将考察生物医学工程领域中表征的创造和使用所采用的认知实践的发展。目标是研究表征系统或外部形式的认知中介的设计和使用如何支持该社区的发展，并促进对在实验室工作的BME科学家的理解。此外，该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。我们的目标是了解科学家是如何在他们的实验室工作、会议和私人沉思的背景下创造表征的，以及这些表征是如何在他们工作的物质实体和潜在的概念、结构和过程之间进行协调的。该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。这项研究的结果将用于为两个基于erc的教育项目提供建议，一个是计划于2001年秋季在乔治亚理工学院开设的本科BME项目，另一个是乔治亚理工学院-埃默里大学联合生物医学工程博士项目。这些启示将会在为期一年的本科BME入门课程“BME中的问题”中使用PBL方法来设计和改进问题。这些来自实验室活动的问题和发现将分发给认知科学、工程教育和BME社区，供其他人使用和发展。

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.