Poster R3 - Learning on a Limb: An orthopaedic K-12 outreach workshop

Introduction: Musculoskeletal disorders cost approximately $380.9 billion annually, making them the aggregated health category with the greatest spending in the United States.1 Combating these high economic costs and the burden that musculoskeletal disorders have on the global population will require diverse research teams, which produce higher impact work.2 To establish diverse research teams in orthopaedics, targeted efforts to recruit young, diverse students to the field are needed. One effective way of engaging K-12 students to study science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is outreach activities.3 Last year, our group designed and implemented Learning on a Limb, a half-day workshop to teach high school students about orthopaedic research.4 We have now incorporated expanded rigorous evaluation metrics to determine how effectively this workshop taught principles of orthopaedic research and inspired high school students to consider careers in orthopaedics.

Materials and

Methods: Learning on a Limb was planned and executed by the McKay Orthopaedic Research Laboratory’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee and the Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM) Office of Outreach, Education, and Research. High school students were recruited to participate by the PSOM Office of Outreach, Education, and Research. The workshop can be divided into 3 stages: (1) Pre-activity exercises, (2) hands-on activities, and (3) post-activity exercises. During the pre-activity exercise, instructors provided students with a brief background on orthopaedic tissues and the techniques they would learn during the hands-on activities. For the hands-on activities, students were divided into four groups for circuit-style, hands-on breakout sessions. Each group consisted of 3-4 students that completed each of the following activities: (1) biomechanical testing of rat tendons, (2) microcomputed tomography analysis of rat bones, (3) culture of mouse bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells, and (4) histological assessment of intervertebral discs and tendons from humans, rabbits, and rats. Groups worked with instructors to complete each activity, spending approximately 25 min per activity. After completing the hands-on activities, students participated in a post-activity discussion about what they learned and a speed-networking discussion with diverse instructors. The workshop was evaluated using pre/post-tests to assess learning gains and a post-survey to assess interest in orthopaedic and biomedical engineering research. The pre/post-test consisted of 8 multiple-choice questions (2 per activity). Average pre/post-test results were compared using paired Student’s t-tests (α = 0.05). This study was approved by the University of Pennsylvania Institutional Review Board.

Results, Conclusions, and Discussions: 12 high school students participated in our Learning on a Limb workshop. Most students identified as gender (N=7, 58.33%) or racial (N=12, 100%) in STEM. Results from our pre/post-test showed that students experienced significant learning gains from participating in Learning on a Limb. Specifically, the average score increased from 24.0% on the pre-test to 82.3% on the post-test (Fig 1A). In addition to increases in overall score, we found that the percentage of students who answered each test question (TQ) correct was greater in the post-test than the pre-test (Fig 1B). Our post-survey assessment demonstrated that Learning on a Limb also had a positive influence on students’ interest in orthopaedic and biomedical engineering research (Fig 2). Specifically, students indicated that Learning on a Limb their interest in learning about orthopaedics research (SQ1 & SQ2), pursuing careers in orthopaedics (SQ3), and learning about biomedical engineering (SQ4 and SQ5). Additional comments on the post-survey indicated that students had fun participating in all aspects of Learning on a Limb (i.e., hands-on activities and conversations with the Learning on a Limb Team).

Overall, our results demonstrate that completing this workshop was a fun and effective way to teach students about orthopaedics and spark their interest in orthopaedic research. Given the success of this workshop, we plan to conduct Learning on a Limb annually as a means of promoting diverse participation in orthopaedic research. We will also leverage our partnership with the PSOM Office of Outreach, Education, and Research to longitudinally track the students who participated in Learning on a Limb, as has been done in the field of reproductive health and for women in orthopaedics through the Perry Initiative. This long-term longitudinal tracking of students’ college and career choices will allow us to more rigorously evaluate the long-term benefits students received from participating in Learning on a Limb.

Acknowledgements (Optional): This program was supported by the Penn Center for Musculoskeletal Disorders (NIH P30-AR069691) and the Penn Achilles Tendinopathy Center of Research Translation (NIH P50-AR080581).