2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The purpose of this work in progress is to detail the methods and initial results for assessing the change in engineering point of view (EPOV) of students enrolled in an immunoengineering laboratory course as a curriculum intervention. The EPOV was assessed through the evaluation of discussion post assignments relating to newly revised labs for the course, informed by transformative learning theory (TLT). Developed by Jack Mezirow in the late 1970s, TLT outlines that in order for students to transform their mindset, they must engage in critical reflection and rational discourse (Mezirow & Marsick, 1978; Mezirow, 1990; Mezirow, 1997). Since its origins, TLT has been the foundation for many pedagogical approaches and has been used extensively in a variety of contexts.

Context of prior research: The work of Joslyn and Hynes (2022) sought to understand how the use of TLT in teaching Human-Centered Design can help decrease the “culture of disengagement” amongst mechanical engineering students. The authors assessed this through the development of EPOV codes and subcodes, which evaluated students' sociotechnical understanding for their individual assignments. Their codes resulted in the creation of the dominant engineering mindset, extending dominant engineering mindset, and sociotechnical mindset. Using these codes and their respective subcodes, this qualitative approach was quantified in this study to assess the change in students’ mindsets after participating in a curriculum intervention that integrates health equity content in an immunoengineering laboratory course.

Motivation: Work from Benabentos et al. (2014) reported that courses related to the biological sciences only account for 5% of courses that address health disparities, not considering technical biomedical engineering courses. The exclusion of this content contributes to health inequities, therefore justifying the need for a change in the curriculum.

Methods: Through rubric asessments, this paper documents the methods used to measure students’ EPOV for the purpose of quantitatively evaluating the effectiveness of the curriculum intervention in increasing students’ sociotechnical thinking towards biomedical engineering concepts.

Implications of the work: This work contributes to a larger study where we seek to answer the research question, “What impact does immunoengineering curriculum design have on students’ approach to real-world immunoengineering problems that contribute to health inequities in marginalized communities?”