Director of Educational Assessment and Industrial Outreach in BME / Teaching Professor UC San Diego- Department of Bioengineering Poway, California, United States
Introduction: In the past decade, extra-curricular activities have been becoming buzzwords that many educational programs use to advertise their BME program to their stakeholders. However, there is no universal agreement on what exactly extra-curricular activities entail, how they are different or similar to curricular requirements, and what role they play in educational programs. This research is focused on understanding the definition of co- and extra-curricular activities, common examples, and current practices of integration in BME programs, if any. Based on literature review and the feedback of representative industry affiliates, the perceived value of most common extra-curricular activities is also discussed.
Materials and
Methods: Literature has been reviewed in engineering and educational journals, and definitions on the terminology of co- and extra-curricular activities have been analyzed and compared. In addition, representative industry members from companies on the west coast and on the east coast of the United States, who entertain BME internships and co-op programs in conjunction with a BME college program, have been interviewed in guided group meetings. Feedback from other stakeholders and the distribution of current examples have been collected from college information and surveys across the United States. Findings have been summarized, analyzed, and synthetized from all sources.
Results, Conclusions, and Discussions: Employers and students alike credited curriculum-complementary activities, such as internships, co-ops, research experiences, or community service learning as the source of obtaining additional competences and skills that cannot be achieved solely through academics and yet are wanted by employers. However, many of the commonly in colleges offered activities varied in their classification between enrichment activities, co-curriculars, extra-curriculars, electives, or required activities. Furthermore, as observed in group discussions with industry members, the understanding of terminology related to extra-curricular activities diverged widely. Table 1 displays resulting definitions of synergized terminology, based on literature review and industry input. As reported by institutions, the most frequently offered extra-curricular activities, in which students engaged, were identified as internships, co-ops, research experiences, and community learning projects (see table 2). The results showed that Carnegie R1 universities mostly focused on research activities for undergraduates, whereas career-oriented internships and co-ops were frequently taken up by students in smaller colleges with predominantly undergraduate BME education. However, most of the offered activities were paralleled or entirely independent of the BME programs, not integrated in the curriculum, not assessed for learning outcomes, nor reflected upon by the participants. For further reasons of equal accessibility of these activities, the value of integrating these activities into BME curricula was discussed with stakeholders. Feedback from industry partners provided very little perceived value for employers in just adding them to the transcripts, but highlighted the employment value for graduates, when the institution fosters engagement of students in these opportunities. On the other hand, students and academics perceived the integration of extra-curricular activities with course credit as heightened experiences on the pedagogical level [1, 8, 11]. In summary, extra-curricular activities in BME programs are highly valuable for the student experience, the reputation of the university, and the employability factors for industry. However, the understanding of the “what they are” and the integration of these activities into BME programs are very diverse across the United States. Although all stakeholders agreed on the benefits of these activities, current practices, integration in BME programs, evaluation of pedagogical outcomes, and the barrier to accessibility needs further discussion. References (table 3)
