Making General Education Relevant for Engineering Students Maggie Slattery, Ph.D. Penn State University Dept. of Biomedical Engineering Keywords: Large on-line instruction, General Education, ABET Outcome H

Why? Typically, engineering students do not inherently appreciate the value of breadth within General Education. Arts/Humanities/Social Science courses are often out of the comfort zone for engineering students. There is inherent risk in taking a course in a unfamiliar area or area that doesn’t align with technical strengths especially when GPA can determine eligibility for major. – Benefits of risk taking are often hidden to students General Education experience can give engineering students the background needed to design within societal and cultural constraints. (ABET Student Outcome H) I want a better answer for “Which GenEd course I should take?”

Still in developmental phases Served as co-chair of General Education Task force for all of PSU and work on curriculum for department, college and university. I see places where we in Engineering can improve. – The distributed model of campuses at PSU leaves many 1 st and 2 nd year students at campuses without a critical mass of engineering faculty or networking opportunities. – Help make intentional the connection between Arts/Humanities/Social Sciences and Engineering problems. When? I am here.

Where? Key Idea: Develop a series of courses that cover General Education content framed in the context of engineering applications as a way help provide a relevant GenEd experience. Some possible examples: – Poetry and literature about fracking – Psychological and sociological aspects of space colonization For me and BME students – ARE WE PLAYING GOD? – The historical context and philosophy of ethics. I would use case studies about medical device failures, human and animal experimentation and other biomedical related scenarios to explore ethics as it applies to biomedical engineering today. These types of courses in some ways currently exist, but the availability and targeting first year students are newer ideas for PSU © Fox Pictures, 2015 © Huffington Post, 2013 © Glass Hospital, 2013

What is your theory of change? – Start small and use examples of successful early adopters to garner wider support What? Developing learning activities and materials with collaborators and an instructional designer is next.

Prognosis? How are you documenting impact? – Will do survey comparison of students in the newly designed course(s) vs. standard first year courses for appreciation of GenEd in general, Arts, Humanities, & Social Sciences How do you plan to scale-up? – Need to advertise to ENGR students at all PSU campuses – Will start with one course and use that success to recruit others to develop similar courses on different topics. What challenges are you currently facing? – Time, no buy-out of other responsibilities to develop this What advice would you like from others at FOEE? – Best practices course design for large web-based courses