Poster R2 - Effective Leadership Modules to Develop Upperclassmen Mentors for an Introductory Biomedical Engineering Course

Introduction: The Effective Teaching and Management of Engineering Teams (ETMET) course provides biomedical engineering (BME) undergraduate students with the opportunity to mentor first-year BME students as lab managers in our introductory course, Biomedical Engineering & Design (BMED). Lab managers’ role is integral, as BMED is a team-based, flipped, active-learning course. The lab managers mentor the first-year students on how to obtain and analyze data, present information in written reports and oral presentations, and divide group projects into manageable tasks to meet deadlines. Thus, the topics of conflict management, design of assessments, ethics, group development, peer review, public speaking, and technical communication are essential for lab managers to be successful mentors.

Materials and

Methods: We have obtained IRB approval (HIRB00018974) and conducted a pilot study over the past year. We created seven three-to-five-minute videos to teach ETMET students (n = 25) about each of the leadership modules (conflict management, design of assessments, ethics, group development, peer review, public speaking, and technical communication) throughout the semester. We administered a beginning-of-the-semester baseline quiz and an end-of-semester quiz to assess the lab managers’ understanding of the topics presented. We followed up with a post-semester survey with two questions for each module. Students ranked their confidence using a five-point Likert scale, with 1 representing “Strongly Disagree” and 5 representing “Strongly Agree.” Differences between pre- and post-modules were assessed with Wilcoxon paired t-tests.

Results, Conclusions, and Discussions: Our end-of-semester survey demonstrated that lab managers generally had increased confidence in their knowledge and ability to explain respective concepts (p < 0.05). We also found a statistically significant increase in quiz scores on our conflict management content using a paired t-test (p = 0.0371), though each model trended towards an increase in score. Lab managers’ written feedback indicated that although students felt these videos were effective, many suggested supplementing them with in-person, active learning material.

Ultimately, the implementation of leadership module education within the ETMET course provided supplementary information for lab managers to support first-year BME students in the BMED course. With increased confidence in the lab managers’ ability to mentor younger students in introductory BME material, the leadership video modules provided a supportive platform for education and guidance amongst upperclassmen and freshmen.

For the upcoming semester, we plan to provide each video module throughout the semester with in-person exercises to supplement the modules. Each module will be introduced at an appropriate time to best prepare the LMs to help students with what to come next in the course. For instance, the group development module will be introduced at the beginning of the semester to teach LMs how to better facilitate group interactions and development. Towards the end of the semester, the public speaking module will be introduced to aid with the first-year students’ final presentations, which occur in the last week of classes. In addition, the ETMET course is taught in a flipped classroom, asynchronous format, which some students found challenging. Improving in-person interaction and clarity between instructors and LMs will be crucial for enhancing mentorship and leadership training in future iterations of the course.

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