2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In Fall 2023, a first-of-its-kind student-stakeholder interaction event called the Biomedical Stakeholder Café was run at the University of Waterloo. The goal of the event was to facilitate capstone engineering students connecting with diverse biomedical stakeholders to gain lived experience insight and expertise to inform their final year design projects. This multi-stage event was intentionally designed to address known challenges with student-stakeholder interactions by including capstone team applications, student-stakeholder matching, a preparatory workshop, and finally the student-stakeholder conversations themselves.

This paper presents a foundation for an evidence-based student-stakeholder interaction model that enables students to build needed skills and include stakeholders successfully in their design process by (1) presenting a multi-step student-stakeholder interaction model that addresses identified challenges and (2) provides a preliminary assessment of the interaction model based on event organizer, stakeholder, and student perceptions. Using this model, 23 capstone teams across four programs at the University of Waterloo connected with 18 diverse biomedical stakeholders. In total, 44 conversations occurred during the Biomedical Stakeholder Café with each capstone team having one to three stakeholder conversations. The stakeholders represented a broad cross section of the health care community including medical doctors, nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists, pharmacists, disability advocates, paramedics, and people with lived experiences.

Based on initial feedback from event organizers, stakeholders, and students, the event was successful at facilitating professional, meaningful student-stakeholder interactions. Stakeholders described their conversations with students as professional and respectful with students coming prepared with questions and showing a willingness to learn and pivot their design approach. Students have expressed gratitude for the opportunity to participate in the event and an interest in seeing this event occur again in the future. The event organizers were able to observe how the preparatory workshop prepared students to make the most of the stakeholder interaction opportunity by coaching them on professionalism, setting goals, and preparing questions. While the event organizers acknowledge that this model did not lessen the challenging time commitment involved with organizing the event, they did see a clear benefit to connect students with stakeholders from the local community and supporting student lifelong learning. Future work includes a formal analysis of student and stakeholder perceptions of the event and developing a plan towards sustaining and growing the event and evidence-base.