Interdisciplinary Work as a Pedagogical Innovation for Biomedical Engineering and Health Science Students

Abstract

The real world requires new professionals who know how to work in interdisciplinary teams to solve different types of problems efficiently. However, at university students have few scenarios where they can acquire and consolidate these necessary skills. One way to approach this problem is to offer interdisciplinary elective courses where different active and collaborative learning techniques (AcoLTs) can be applied, simulating “real” professional contexts. The aim of this study is to implement and evaluate AcoLTs to promote significant learning environments and communities of practices on an interdisciplinary course (Assistive Technology—AT) for health science and biomedical engineering students. Among the selected and adapted AcoLTs are: Project-based learning, Role-play, Hands-on technology and Hackathons. A combination was used of an only post-test one-group design using a survey and a semi-structured interview to find out the students’ perceptions about the AcoLTs implemented on the AT course. The constructs measured in the survey were Satisfaction with Learning (SL) and Communities of Practice (CoP) using a 7-point Likert scale. Descriptive statistics were used and a Spearman correlation between CoP and SL constructs was calculated. As a result, we found a strong correlation between SL and CoP, and that the students were satisfied with the opportunity to solve problems through interdisciplinary team-work relating to the project they were developing. Placing the students in “real” simulated situations of their professional practice allowed them to acquire competences such as team-work, problem solving and critical thinking skills.