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Adapting a Cell and Tissue Engineering Laboratory Course to an Online Delivery Format

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Conference

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Location

Virtual Conference

Publication Date

July 26, 2021

Start Date

July 26, 2021

End Date

July 19, 2022

Conference Session

Improving the BME Classroom on the Ground and Virtually

Tagged Division

Biomedical Engineering

Page Count

5

DOI

10.18260/1-2--36647

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/36647

Download Count

351

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Paper Authors

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Abhishek Bhattacharjee University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

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Abhishek Bhattacharjee is a bioengineering undergrad at the University of Illinois, studying the cell and tissue engineering track. He has extensive wet lab experience through student research and is applying his skills at the Jensen Lab for bioengineering education.

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Mona Jawad University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

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Mona Jawad is a Bioengineering student with a computer science minor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research focus is the use of technology to increase accessibility to education and wellness.

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Eileen M. Johnson University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

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Eileen Johnson graduated with her bachelor's degree in bioengineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. There she worked in Dr. Brendan Harley's lab engineering shape-fitting biomaterial implants for craniomaxillofacial defects. She then graduated with her master's degree in bioengineering from UIUC, where she worked in Dr. Pablo Perez-Pinera's lab developing novel genetic engineering systems. She also worked as a Teaching Assistant for an introductory bioengineering cell culture lab. She currently works for Dr. Karin Jensen as a Research Assistant with a focus on education in engineering.

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Anna M. Busza University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

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Anna Busza holds a B.S. degree in bioengineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

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Riley John Lehmann

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Riley Lehmann worked as a Lab Assistant for Bioe 202 for two years. He has now graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and looks forward to applying the skills and knowledge that he gathered from Bioe 202 towards his future career.

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Benjamin M. David University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

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Benjamin David is a graduate student in the Jensen Lab at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. As an Undergraduate, he worked as a lab assistant for the Cell and Tissue Engineering Lab.

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Pablo Perez-Pinera University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

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Karin Jensen University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-9456-5042

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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.

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Abstract

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.

Bhattacharjee, A., & Jawad, M., & Johnson, E. M., & Busza, A. M., & Lehmann, R. J., & David, B. M., & Perez-Pinera, P., & Jensen, K. (2021, July), Adapting a Cell and Tissue Engineering Laboratory Course to an Online Delivery Format Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--36647

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