Cohort March 2022: Faculty of Applied Science – Robyn Newell, Jessica Tran
Project background
BMEG 330 is a third-year undergraduate course in biomechanical applications for biomedical engineers. A primary goal of the course is to provide students with the current tools and knowledge to best prepare them for the field of biomechanics. This field looks at the effect of forces acting upon the human body. The applications of biomechanics are numerous, and it is the discipline centrally involved in things such as: understanding how human tissues get injured, studying how the forces and motions of our body might contribute to diseases such as arthritis or back pain, and designing joint replacements, sport or car protective equipment, and prosthetics. However, as important as this field is to the health and well-being of many people, there is a notable lack of representation of different populations of people in terms of our understanding of mechanics and approaches to biomechanical design.
For example, safety features in cars or orthopedic implant designs are often designed and tested using biomechanical data obtained from the average white male. This doesn’t truly represent the diversity of people biomedical engineers are aiming to impact or even reflect the diversity of our own student population. Furthermore, there is little mention of this lack of representation in textbooks, readings, and other curriculum-related resources. This lack of representation is a concerning problem in the course curriculum and it doesn’t equip the students with the knowledge to address this in their future careers; thus, a more diverse approach is needed.
Project details
There is a valuable opportunity to both acknowledge this lack of diversity and explore ways to tackle it with future biomechanical engineers who can go out and change the way biomechanics is done. Therefore, the goal of this project is to evaluate approaches to integrate discussion about the lack of diversity into the course curriculum, develop resources to integrate diversity, and then implement these changes in an effective way.
We have formed a small team that will perform surveys and focus groups with past and current students in the course, with the goal of hearing the perspectives of a diverse group of students. We will listen to the student perspective on what is currently missing from the curriculum, ideas on how they feel the lack of diversity could be included in a respectful way, and how to best engage students with the curriculum from a wide range of backgrounds and learning styles. We then aim to implement the most promising suggestions in the course curriculum through additional resources, lecture content, new assignments or projects. We will evaluate the effectiveness of our plan using student surveys, focus groups, and measuring engagement with the new course content.