Work in progress: Alternative lab reports for biomedical engineering

Karin Jensen, Paul Jensen

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

Abstract

This paper is a Work in Progress to describe the implementation of alternative lab reports in biomedical engineering curriculum. Communication skills are critical for engineering students to succeed in a wide variety of careers. This necessity is recognized by ABET in student outcome 3 “an ability to communicate effectively with a range of audiences” [1]. Despite this, students may not view written communication skills as an important skill for engineers. Technical writing instruction and practice is often implemented in undergraduate laboratory courses where students write standard lab reports (abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion) that most closely resemble a scientific journal article. In an effort to demonstrate to students how they might communicate about experimental data in different ways and to prompt them to consider communicating data to a range of audiences and for varying purposes, we developed alternative lab report assignments for a biomedical engineering laboratory course offered to sophomore undergraduates. In addition to developing written communication skills, the writing assignments were designed to demonstrate to students how they might write in careers in the biotech industry. Here we describe the implementation of alternative lab reports for a cell and tissue engineering lab course. We present the implementation of the report structure, associated rubric used for all reports, preliminary student feedback, and limitations of the approach.

Original languageEnglish (US)
JournalASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 15 2019
Event126th ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition: Charged Up for the Next 125 Years, ASEE 2019 - Tampa, United States
Duration: Jun 15 2019Jun 19 2019

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Engineering

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