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Biomedical Engineering Education

Human-centered design engineering education model improves student confidence and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics-readiness

(F-237) Human-centered design engineering education model improves student confidence and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics-readiness

Friday, October 13, 2023

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM PDT

Location: Exhibit Hall - Row F - Poster # 237

Presenting Author(s)

AH

Amaris Huang (she/her/hers)

Undergraduate Researcher
Duke University
Youngstown, New York, United States
HL

Hannah Lee

Undergraduate Research Assistant
Duke University, United States
KD

Kunyu Du (she/her/hers)

Undergraduate Research Assistant
Duke University, United States

Co-Author(s)

YY

Yikun Yin

Undergraduate Research Assistant
Duke University, United States
MM

Megan Madonna

Assistant Director of Education at the Center for Global Women's Health Technologies
Duke University, United States

Primary Investigator(s)

NR

Nimmi Ramanujam

Robert W. Carr, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Duke University, United States

Introduction:: Human-centered engineering design processes can create innovative solutions to global issues such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). Young students from underrepresented genders and backgrounds globally have the unique capacity to address these UD SDGs in their local communities, but often lack the resources and training. The Ignite initiative, developed by Duke University’s Center for Global Women’s Health Technologies, integrates human-centered design (HCD), co-learning and critical pedagogy to promote collaborative mentorship and foster global awareness. Within Ignite, Duke undergraduate students, Ignite Trainers, work with Duke faculty and staff to develop a curriculum that teaches HCD and prototyping skills to high school students for addressing specific community needs tied to the UN SDGs.

Materials and Methods:: Through a mixed-methods approach, we studied the effect of our 2022 Ignite implementation on both our undergraduate Trainers and our high school mentees. In September 2022, we recruited undergraduate students (n = 25) and high-school mentees (n = 12) for year-long research projects that address the Health (#3), Water (#6), and Light ( #7) UN SDGs. Project outcomes included final prototypes and presentations detailing their challenges and successes in the HCD process (Figure 1). Both Trainers and mentees were given a pre- and a post-program survey to collect student demographics and assess students’ attitudes and grit within the engineering design process. Specifically, questions were stratified to evaluate attitudes on categories of motivation, confidence, and anxiety levels at different engineering design stages on a scale of 0 -100, with opportunities for short-answer elaborations. Regarding grit, we utilized a series of Likert scale questions to gauge the Trainer’s and mentee’s interest and feelings of preparedness in STEM-related topics as well questions surrounding themes of growth, resilience, and innovation with potential responses of (1) ‘Strongly Disagree’ (2)‘Disagree’ (3)‘No Opinion’ (4)‘Agree’ (5)‘Strongly Agree’. Statistical hypothesis was performed using Python3, Excel, and R to analyze all data. Lastly, we conducted thematic analysis on the mentees’ open-ended elaborations on confidence, motivation, and anxiety levels. All research was performed under Duke University IRB protocol number 2021-0087.

Results, Conclusions, and Discussions:: Results: Within this year’s cohort, 85% of mentees and 76% of Trainers were female or gender minorities. Using paired-t-tests, we observed that Trainers’ anxiety levels significantly decreased (p < 0.05) while their confidence levels significantly increased both overall and at each individual stage of the engineering design process (p < 0.05) after the program. Additionally, over 80% of Trainers answered either ‘Agree’ or ‘Strongly Agree’ when asked about Ignite’s role in their preparedness and eagerness to continue future engineering instruction. Moreover, we observed an increase in average confidence levels surrounding design for high-school students following the completion of the program (p < 0.05). Through thematic analysis, we observed that before Ignite, many mentees expressed anxiety about creating or designing a physical working prototype (n = 8 or 61.5%); for example, one high school student stated "designing a prototype is one thing, but designing a prototype that is useful and actually helps a community is much more difficult". However, after Ignite, we found that students were motivated by their ability to provide solutions for their community (n = 4 or 30.8%) and expressed increased confidence throughout the design and iteration process (n = 4 or 30.8%).

Conclusions: Utilizing descriptive statistical analysis, preliminary data analysis suggests that this model is mutually beneficial for both the Trainer and mentee, resulting in significant increases in confidence towards science engineering, mathematics, and technology (STEM) fields. The positive outcomes of STEM-readiness indicate that future studies could explore the program’s longitudinal impact on returning Trainers and mentees’ education/career readiness and aspirations, furthering the long-term goal of Ignite to empower upward mobility across participants and mentors.

Discussion: Through culturally responsive, community-centered design, Ignite integrates place-based education and co-learning into engineering problem solving. This has allowed for the recruitment and retention of a diverse population of high school mentees and undergraduate Trainers to co-create solutions for relevant and meaningful problems. This pilot program has demonstrated its efficacy; our program model can now be expanded for future training programs that empower young students to apply HCD to identify and engineer solutions for community needs, fostering innovative problem-solving and creative design-thinking.

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