Cohort March 2023: Faculty of Applied Science – Jenna Usprech, Laia Shpeller, Natalia Nayyar
Project background
BMEG 455 is a required fourth-year undergraduate course on professionalism and ethics for biomedical engineering students. The purpose of the course is to enable students to understand and appreciate the duties and standards they are expected to uphold once they graduate and become professional engineers. One area of focus is to teach students the value of diverse perspectives. By incorporating diverse viewpoints, particularly those of people who are end/target users of design solutions, it will lead these future engineers to create better and more inclusive designs. Biomedical engineers primarily design products and systems for people and, therefore, the ethos of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in engineering design is even more pertinent to impart on graduating students.
Inclusive Design Project (IDP)
An inclusive design project (IDP) has been run in BMEG 455 for the past three years that helps our program in the School of Biomedical Engineering (SBME) innovatively incorporate EDI concepts into engineering courses (an important mandate related to accreditation and UBC strategic initiatives). Each year, despite small improvements, the IDP has garnered mixed feedback from students in course evaluations. Generally, students understand the purpose of the IDP, but feel that they get shallow guidance, training and experience in how to develop empathy with users. Some students also believe that developing empathy for users is disconnected from skills that professional engineers need to have.
The IDP has also not led to widespread or meaningful student engagement with users. This is with the exception of a few student groups who benefitted from directly interviewing and involving users in the IDP. Although the intention has always been for the majority of students to have the transformative experience that the minority of students have had, there are gaps here that students are well-suited to identify. These anecdotes highlight deficiencies with how this material is being taught, and whether the current IDP is having the intended impact.
Students as Partners Project
We have an opportunity to improve the IDP and influence the approach that future biomedical engineers take in designing more inclusively and collaboratively. We’ve formed a small partnership team to address the deficiencies noted in the IDP for BMEG 455. In order to re-design the IDP in a rigorous manner that’s driven by data and incorporates diverse student perspectives, we will first survey students who took BMEG 455 in 2022W1.
This survey will ask for specifics about what was challenging and/or rewarding about the IDP and welcome suggestions for improvement. Students who elect to provide further comment will be asked to participate in a focus group where we can gather more depth on the diverse perspectives. Our team will then synthesize this data and pull out important considerations to incorporate in the re-design effort.
We will seek to balance our program’s need to meet certain accreditation requirements, with a need to make the IDP more approachable and impactful for students. Following the implementation of the re-designed IDP, we will survey students in the 2023W1 term to evaluate the impact of this initiative.
Testimonials
For me, working with Laia and Natalia and gathering feedback from students who had taken the course last year, has allowed me to view the course project from many other lenses. As an instructor I’m used to running with my own ideas and best judgement before trialing a change in a course. The collaborative process with students as partners has made me more confident that the changes we’ll implement this year will have a real impact on students in the class. It’s also been a really fun experience working to make changes directly with students!
— Jenna Usprech
Being part of an SAP project has been an extremely rewarding experience. The opportunity to work with, not for, a professor creates a unique, collaborative, and trusting environment which allows for engaging discussion and creative action to be taken. Additionally, the supports offered by the SAP team have given us the tools and confidence we need to build out a successful project. As a student, the unique opportunity to make a direct and positive impact on my peer’s learning is rewarding and empowering, something I am grateful to the SAP team for providing.
— Laia Shpeller
The SAP project has been an extremely interesting experience in many ways, and I’ve really enjoyed the time spent on it so far as it has been really rewarding. It allows for an enhanced understanding of the expectations placed on us as students, and for engaging discussions to take place between a student and professor. As a student, I’m grateful for this opportunity, and excited to see the direction in which it goes!
— Natalia Nayyar