Poster R1 - Early Problem Framing Assessment to Reduce Project Pivots in a Biomedical Engineering Capstone Course

Introduction: With the rise of project-based learning in undergraduate engineering education, there has been increasing emphasis on the use of engineering design processes. Many undergraduate biomedical engineering (BME) curricula no longer reserve engineering design as a senior capstone experience but instead incorporate design as a practice repeated throughout the degree from first-year design courses to project-based electives that build up to a capstone design curriculum. This repetitive educational approach allows students to go through the engineering design process iteratively, getting feedback in each cycle to improve their skills and deepen their practice. To complete these iterations in a semester or trimester, these project-based courses often start with a defined project, problem statement, and/or requirements to provide space for emphasis on the disciplinary topic of the course. In this approach, students may have little practice in need assessment and project definition before their capstone experience. This work describes the use of an in-course iteration strategy for problem framing in a capstone engineering design course that allows for formative assessment on learning outcomes related to synthesis of information from multiple sources, understanding diverse stakeholders needs and translation of needs into design requirements.

Materials and

Methods: This work was completed in a well-established, year-long undergraduate BME capstone design course that fulfills the learning outcomes for the ABET criteria associated with engineering design. The course has ~20 teams per cohort and breaks the engineering design process into 4 x 7-week phases: (1) Problem Framing, (2) Solution Conceptualization, (3) Prototyping and (4) Verification & Validation. Although this curriculum is taught with iteration and feedback throughout all phases, the focus of this work is iteration in the Problem Framing phase. In the third week of the course teams complete a written brief and oral presentation describing their problem opportunity.

The written brief includes evaluation of problem overview, need statement & user needs, clinical background, stakeholder & persona descriptions, competitive landscape analysis, problem size, team fit, limitations & risks. The oral presentation asks teams to utilize story-telling techniques taught in class to show the synthesis of their research, showcasing the impact of solving their identified need for stakeholder groups and insights from the competitive landscape. After this first pass in problem framing teams have 4 weeks before a second submission with evaluation of only the written components.

To assess the impact of early iteration in problem framing, frequency and timing of project pivots was used as a surrogate measure for learning in these areas. Pivots are tracked between (1) project assignment and first-pass problem framing and (2) between first and second pass deliverables. The degree of improvement in the evaluation of written brief components was measured.

Results, Conclusions, and Discussions: To enable iterative formative assessment in problem framing, a large-scale BME capstone engineering design course implemented a project opportunity deliverable in week 3 of a year-long program. Assessment of impact of iterative learning in this content area as measured by the frequency and timing of project pivots is ongoing. Faculty observed improved depth of analysis between the first and second pass written assignments in problem framing. Grades show an average improvement of 2 points between assignments. Continued work is in process to assess how iteration in this earliest phase of the engineering design process may improve learning outcomes for students in this area.

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