Summer 2020 | Redesign of senior undergraduate bioengineering design project course for remote delivery | COVID-19
Open position: An organized, resourceful, creative, and analytical UC Berkeley Engineering or STEM Education student/postdoc who will partner with the faculty instructor to redesign experiential learning for the senior undergraduate bioengineering design capstone course (Bioengineering 192).
A stipend will support 8 weeks of remote curriculum development & research, at 15-20 hrs per week during summer 2020, with work hours and weeks flexible, given the successful candidate’s preferences. The successful candidate will work from a fully developed, in-residence pedagogy (syllabus, grading rubrics, course content, 12-year clinical partnering track record), and potentially collaborate with instructors of similar ‘capstone engineering’ courses across the US and internationally. There is a possibility for publication and dissemination of findings, depending on quality, timing, and potential for impact.
Rationale: As universities pivot to remote or semi-remote offering of engineering courses, the capstone ‘senior engineering design’ experience will be reconsidered. Remote offering will dramatically change the character of the senior design experience for bioengineers, regarding 3 important aspects: (1) identifying alternatives to our clinical partners at regional teaching hospitals for capstone projects, (2) devising remote or alternate approaches to prototyping and testing of project solution concepts (including possible distributed ‘maker kits’), and (3) designing and supporting virtual team-based learning.
Deliverables: Summer 2020 assistance from a teaching-focused GSR or postdoctoral fellow with an interest in STEM education in a COVID-19/post-COVID-19 world will work with the course instructor to tackle the course and redesign of experiential engineering design learning. The course will be ‘hardened’ to prepare for the possibility of fully remote learning.
Specifically, during summer 2020, the successful candidate will:
(i) identify established ‘best practices’ approaches for remote team-based, project courses (e.g., international teams),
(ii) identify suitable alternates for hands-on prototype fabrication and testing that has been the cornerstone of the BioE 192 experience for 12 years,
(iii) identify and contact suitable relevant — but no longer ‘frontline’ — clinical partners for the unmet needs (e.g., retired clinicians, veterinary medicine, professional medical associations and ancillary clinical concerns, international NGOs),
(iv) adjust rubrics for grading/assessment, and
(v) identify avenues for sharing our findings with other team-based, project-focused BioE or engineering courses (American Association of Engineering Education, BMES-IDEA papers).
Application submission: Along with your contact information, please submit your up-to-date CV/resume and a <250 word rationale for your preparation and interest in the position using the form below. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis, so there is advantage to applying at your first convenience, but no later than May 29th, 2020 at 9PM PDT.