Community Health Innovation through an Interprofessional Course

Abstract

is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering at James Madison University. She has eight years of diversified engineering design experience, both in academia and industry, and has experienced engineering design in a range of contexts, including product design, bio-inspired design, electrical and control system design, manufacturing system design, and design for the factory floor. Dr. Nagel earned her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Oregon State University and her M.S. and B.S. in manufacturing engineering and electrical engineering, respectively, from the Missouri University of Science and Technology. Dr. Nagel's long-term goal is to drive engineering innovation by applying her multidisciplinary engineering expertise to instrumentation and manufacturing challenges. Dr. Patrice M. Ludwig, James Madison UniversityPatrice Ludwig is an Assiatant Professor of Biology at James Madison University. She earned her doctoral degree in biology from the University of Virginia. Her research interests are in understanding changes in undergraduate attitudes and knowledge as a result of work across disciplines to solve real world problems. She also studies using artificial substrates to restore and conserve oyster reefs. Community Health Innovation through an Interprofessional Course AbstractThe broad goal of this interdisciplinary course is to allow pre-professional biology, pre-nursing, and engineering students to leverage MakerSpace technology to produce and communicate tangible solutions to current challenges in community health. For the past two iterations of the course students developed solutions to metabolic syndrome using MakerSpace technologies (3D printing, laser cutters/engravers, virtual reality, and related software). Communication between disciplines that impact each other, but may have different biases and goals, is important. This communication is facilitated through teamwork. In the course, students receive explicit training in problem solving techniques, teamwork, and communication. For example, students form their teams using the StrengthsFinders analysis to build on the individual strengths. Moreover, the teams watch a video on the challenger disaster to evaluate systemic reasons leading to failure in team decision making. Additionally, the MakerSpace is used to foster creative problem solving, collaboration skills, and knowledge of technologies that may shape their professions' future.The instructor's' role in the course is to serve as facilitators and guides while students work to develop their solutions. This process ensures that students take ownership of their project as an engaged team. It allows students to strengthen their problem-solving and collaboration skills. The interdisciplinary teaching team models the teamwork skills the students are learning. The aim is to promote interdisciplinary learning, foster teamwork, and improve student engagement. Other course objectives are to develop students' creative problem solving, empathetic design practices, communication skills, prototyp...

Student learning outcomes from a pilot medical innovations course with nursing, engineering, and biology undergraduate students

“…We provide a brief description of the course here, and a full description of the course is available in (Nagel, Lewis, and Ludwig 2017). Our students formed multidisciplinary teams according to their major (a distribution of majors on each team) and personal strengths (described below) with the aim to develop collaboration and problem solving capabilities.…”

Collaborative Teamwork Prototyping and Creativity in Digital Fabrication Design Education

“…As a difference to the exploration of teamwork in the design studio, teamwork in the context of digital fabrication is influenced by the wide range of technological tools and related skills targeted. In the digital fabrication context, teamwork has been explored as interdisciplinary skills that foster individual strengths and improves student engagement (Nagel et al, 2017). The multidisciplinary experience and utilisation of digital fabrication technologies enhanced student learning and engagement, fostered teamwork and interdisciplinary skills, and increased innovation ability.…”

“…Teamwork in the context of digital fabrication design education is generally an underexplored topic. A few exceptions are the works of Georgiev et al (2022), Nagel et al (2017), andZhan et al (2022). As a difference to the exploration of teamwork in the design studio, teamwork in the context of digital fabrication is influenced by the wide range of technological tools and related skills targeted.…”

Board 31: Assessing the Impact of Embedding Nursing Students in Bioengineering Senior Design Projects: Student Perceptions of Interprofessional Team Benefits and Challenges

“…Students were trained and received access to a maker space for prototype production. Students self-reported gains in teamwork skills and increased valuation of multidisciplinary teams and problem-solving [9,10]. Although qualitative data were not presented regarding these gains, students did demonstrate gains relative to the course objectives.…”