Bioengineering Global Health: Design and Implementation of a Summer Day Camp for High School Students

Abstract

Summer camps present opportunities for students to expand their knowledge of science and engineering principles and applications, acquire hands-on experience in laboratory techniques, and increase interest in pursuing college degrees and careers in science and engineering. Although many engineering summer camps for high school students are offered throughout the country, few are focused specifically on bioengineering.In this paper, we present our approach to designing a summer day camp for rising 9 th and 10 th graders that is unique in its focus on bioengineering and use of a global health theme. We chose global health because it is an intriguing topic that appeals to students from all backgrounds and is accessible to students with variable previous exposure to science and engineering topics. Furthermore, global health applications clearly demonstrate important bioengineering design principles and showcase the positive impact bioengineers make on society. These considerations are especially important for students from groups that are under-represented in science and engineering. To our knowledge, this is the only currently available summer camp in which high school students explore bioengineering in the context of global health.The curriculum for the one-week program consisted of short lectures, team-based problem solving activities, research lab tours, and an interactive information session with current bioengineering undergraduates at the University of Washington (UW). Topics included the engineering design process, molecular biology of infectious disease, synthetic biology, drug delivery in HIV treatment, and low-cost point-of-care diagnostics. Students were encouraged to have informal conversations with undergraduate and graduate student guest instructors during lunch. As a culminating end-of-camp activity, students worked in teams to design solutions to current problems in global health and presented their projects to peers and guests.Students provided both quantitative and qualitative assessment of the camp through pre-and post-camp surveys. Student assessment data indicate that the camp was effective in increasing students' self-assessed knowledge about science and engineering and the bioengineering field, and the camp increased the participants' desire to attend college at the host institution in the future. Students enjoyed the team project of designing a solution to a problem in global health. As student assessment indicates that the camp was an enjoyable and effective learning experience, this camp will serve as a model for future offerings.

Teaching and learning about respiratory infectious diseases: A scoping review of interventions in K‐12 education

“…We found a broad array of interventions designed by researchers and teachers to engage students in learning about infectious diseases. We classified these into a four types depending on the role students play in the learning process: (1) interventions in which students experience, simulate, model, or modify viruses or diseases ( n = 13, 56%; e.g., Colella, 2000 ; Corredor et al, 2014 ); (2) interventions in which students investigate the cause, source, mode of infection ( n = 12, 52%; e.g., Bartlow & Vickers, 2020 ; Ketelhut, 2007 ); (3) interventions in which students read, study, and evaluate various sources of information to understand diseases ( n = 4, 17%), such as historical documents (Jacque et al, 2016 ; Papadopoulou et al, 2020 ) and selected research articles (Hug et al, 2005 ); and (4) interventions in which students are presented with content knowledge about infectious diseases through other means ( n = 3, 13%), such as lectures, videos, lab activities, and field trips (e.g., Hendricks et al, 2015 ).…”

“…Unlike other STEM topics that are often promoted in out‐of‐school settings, the majority of reviewed interventions ( n = 18, 78%) took place in school settings with full or partial in‐person instructions. Two studies (Hendricks et al, 2015 ; Taylor et al, 2010 ) were conducted in a summer camp, and three studies (Nieves, 2020 ; Papadopoulou et al, 2020 ; Shen et al, 2020 ) adopted a full online format since they were conducted after school lockdown caused by COVID‐19. Ten studies were hybrid, including both in‐person as well as computer‐ or web‐based activities.…”

“…The three studies investigated whether students' learning about infectious diseases also led to greater interest in science or STEM and/or pursuing careers. The only study showing promise was Hendricks et al' ( 2015 ) global health summer camp which featured lectures and lab activities about bioengineering topics including infectious disease. Their study only found a near statistically significant difference in career interest in science or engineering in pre‐ and posttest of 24 high school students, although it needs to be considered that the students admitted to the summer camp were already selected because of their high interest in related fields.…”