TY - JOUR
T1 - Adapting a Cell and Tissue Engineering Laboratory Course to an Online Delivery Format
AU - Bhattacharjee, Abhishek
AU - Jawad, Mona
AU - Johnson, Eileen M.
AU - Busza, Anna M.
AU - Lehmann, Riley John
AU - David, Benjamin M.
AU - Perez-Pinera, Pablo
AU - Jensen, Karin
N1 - Funding Information:
Karin Jensen, Ph.D. is a Teaching Assistant Professor in bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include student mental health and wellness, engineering student career pathways, and engagement of engineering faculty in engineering education research. She was awarded a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation for her research on undergraduate mental health in engineering programs. Before joining UIUC she completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Sanofi Oncology in Cambridge, MA. She earned a bachelor’s degree in biological engineering from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the University of Virginia.
Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The authors thank the students for their feedback.
PY - 2021/7/26
Y1 - 2021/7/26
N2 - The COVID-19 pandemic has required a substantial increase in online course delivery across higher education. While hands-on laboratory courses are common offerings in biomedical engineering undergraduate programs that have been shown to improve learning outcomes [1], adapting them for online and remote formats is difficult. Specifically, practical skills (e.g., “The degree to which students can properly use scientific equipment, technology, and instrumentation, follow technical and professional protocols, and/or demonstrate proficiency in physical laboratory techniques, procedures, and measurements” [2]) are often regarded as challenging to teach outside a traditional laboratory setting [3]. In an effort to provide students enrolled in an online cell and tissue engineering lab course with hands-on activities for learning lab techniques, we prepared a kit containing the equipment and supplies needed to perform the activities remotely and mailed it to students. The activities included micropipetting exercises, casting and loading DNA gels, simulating cell culture, performing protein quantification and studying enzyme kinetics using protocols that were adapted to meet safety and equipment limitations. The instructors organized synchronous lab session meetings with students to review lab protocols and detailed videos of experiments as well as to discuss experimental design and data analysis. Finally, students also completed one asynchronous lab session and a livestreamed session facilitated by an instructor wearing a GoPro to compare to the synchronous pre-recorded video format. Students will be asked to complete an optional end of semester survey to assess the effectiveness of the online delivery format to accomplish the learning objectives. In this presentation we will provide a detailed description of the experiments we created and the delivery format we developed for online students as well as the student evaluation of instruction. The results of this work can be used to adopt similar at home instructional lab models at other institutions as well as guide the implementation of future online and hybrid lab course offerings.
AB - The COVID-19 pandemic has required a substantial increase in online course delivery across higher education. While hands-on laboratory courses are common offerings in biomedical engineering undergraduate programs that have been shown to improve learning outcomes [1], adapting them for online and remote formats is difficult. Specifically, practical skills (e.g., “The degree to which students can properly use scientific equipment, technology, and instrumentation, follow technical and professional protocols, and/or demonstrate proficiency in physical laboratory techniques, procedures, and measurements” [2]) are often regarded as challenging to teach outside a traditional laboratory setting [3]. In an effort to provide students enrolled in an online cell and tissue engineering lab course with hands-on activities for learning lab techniques, we prepared a kit containing the equipment and supplies needed to perform the activities remotely and mailed it to students. The activities included micropipetting exercises, casting and loading DNA gels, simulating cell culture, performing protein quantification and studying enzyme kinetics using protocols that were adapted to meet safety and equipment limitations. The instructors organized synchronous lab session meetings with students to review lab protocols and detailed videos of experiments as well as to discuss experimental design and data analysis. Finally, students also completed one asynchronous lab session and a livestreamed session facilitated by an instructor wearing a GoPro to compare to the synchronous pre-recorded video format. Students will be asked to complete an optional end of semester survey to assess the effectiveness of the online delivery format to accomplish the learning objectives. In this presentation we will provide a detailed description of the experiments we created and the delivery format we developed for online students as well as the student evaluation of instruction. The results of this work can be used to adopt similar at home instructional lab models at other institutions as well as guide the implementation of future online and hybrid lab course offerings.
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U2 - 10.18260/1-2--36647
DO - 10.18260/1-2--36647
M3 - Conference article
AN - SCOPUS:85124502589
SN - 2153-5965
JO - ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings
JF - ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings
T2 - 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference, ASEE 2021
Y2 - 26 July 2021 through 29 July 2021
ER -