2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This project studied the effects of a class (N=25) on additive manufacturing in a point-of-care healthcare setting funded by NSF DUE (NUMBER and NUMBER). This class was run simultaneously with the same curriculum and research methodology at two large public universities. Data were pooled. We focused on two main areas of growth for the engineering undergraduates enrolled in the class: i) knowledge and skills in additive manufacturing in a healthcare setting, ii) skills in communicating with other engineering undergraduates and with healthcare professionals. To determine growth over the course of the semester, we employed both objective and subjective metrics using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Specifically, we measured content area knowledge through a quiz containing both multiple choice and essay responses at the beginning and end of the semester. This was a statistically significant increase (+10.12, p<. 001). We measured formal written skills through students’ responses to hypothetical email prompts at the beginning and end of the semester. We saw a statistically significant increase in their ability to take another’s perspective during problem solving (+ .48, p<.05). We measured formal spoken skills through a mock job interviews conducted at the end of the semester in which the theme of perspective-taking continued: students used many of the skills practiced during the semester to deal with hypothetical scenarios during the semester. When looked at in alignment with the results concerning students’ ability to take another’s perspective, this leads us to conclude that the majority of the growth in communication skills was about the ability to understand another person's goals, motivations, and behaviors in micro-level communication.