2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Background: Biomedical Engineering (BME) requires students to integrate diverse knowledge domains in life sciences and engineering, applying different learning frameworks. The vast interdisciplinary gap in student cohorts sets up an additional challenge to learning, especially within broad and deep graduate or upper-level technical BME elective courses. The study is presented in the context of a graduate-level “Cancer Bioengineering” course, designed to bridge cancer biology with engineering discovery through interpretation of peer-reviewed scientific data.
Implementation and Assessment: The study utilized a phased pedagogical approach based on social constructivism and inquiry based learning within Cancer Bioengineering. Students were challenged with authentic tasks in the form of prompted interpretation of peer-reviewed scientific data, to co-construct comprehensive knowledge in cancer. Microsoft (MS) Whiteboard was used as a scaffolding tool to facilitate collaborative annotations of scientific data. Assessment was conducted through qualitative instructor observations of discussion depth, evaluation of student annotation quality, and anecdotal student feedback.
Results and Impact: Qualitative evidence indicated that collaborative annotations visualized student thinking by anchoring learning to a prompted task. Students with diverse backgrounds and professional experiences in BME (life sciences, engineering, industry internships, clinical immersions, wet lab research, etc.) brought their own lens towards data interpretation. Within small groups and classroom-wide, students leveraged their knowledge to synthesize scientific data and negotiate meaning within the context of cancer bioengineering.
Conclusions and Future Considerations: The study demonstrates that integrating collaborative digital annotations within a social constructivist framework effectively bridge the interdisciplinary divide in BME education. Rooted in inquiry-based learning, students with diverse expertise effectively and collectively negotiated meaning to construct a holistic understanding of how engineering approaches have transformed cancer discovery and therapeutics. Ultimately, our findings highlight that social constructivist learning environments empower BME students to synthesize complex biological data through a rigorous engineering lens.