Student ethical reasoning confidence pre/post an innovative makerspace course: A survey of ethical reasoning.

BACKGROUND: Challenges today are complex and rapid innovations are required. We instruct a transdisciplinary undergraduate course where engineering, nursing, and pre-professional health students produce tangible innovative solutions to community health challenges using MakerSpace technologies. Students receive evidence-based ethics instruction as part of the course using the 8 Key Questions for improving ethical reasoning. Design thinking, an empathy-based problem solving technique, was used to teach problem solving and provided context for instructing ethical reasoning. OBJECTIVE: The Objective of this research was to assess student ethical reasoning pre/post this course where students concurrently produce innovative products. DESIGN/PARTICIPANTS: Undergraduate students were assessed pre/post course for their perceptions of 1) the importance of, and 2) their confidence in their ability to ethically reason using a digital version of the Survey of Ethical Reasoning, an instrument previously tested in this population. RESULTS: Participants demonstrated a significant gain in their ethical reasoning confidence and maintained their high ranking of the importance of ethical reasoning concurrently to producing innovative products. CONCLUSIONS: It is possible, with deliberate instruction, for transdisciplinary undergraduate students to develop ethical reasoning confidence concurrently to developing innovative products.

Student learning outcomes from a pilot medical innovations course with nursing, engineering, and biology undergraduate students.

BACKGROUND: Preparing today's undergraduate students from science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and related health professions to solve wide-sweeping healthcare challenges is critical. Moreover, it is imperative that educators help students develop the capabilities needed to meet those challenges, including problem solving, collaboration, and an ability to work with rapidly evolving technologies. We piloted a multidisciplinary education (ME) course aimed at filling this gap, and subsequently assessed whether or not students identified achieving the course objectives. In the course, undergraduate students from engineering, pre-nursing (students not yet admitted to the nursing program), and pre-professional health (e.g., pre-med and pre-physician's assistant) were grouped based on their diversity of background, major, and StrengthsFinder® proficiencies in a MakerSpace to create tangible solutions to health-related problems facing the community. We then used qualitative content analysis to assess the research question: what is the impact of undergraduate multidisciplinary education offered in a MakerSpace on student attitudes towards and perceptions of skills required in their own as well as others occupations? RESULTS: We discovered these students were able to identify and learn capabilities that will be critical in their future work. For example, students appreciated the challenging problems they encountered and the ability to meet demands using cutting-edge technologies including 3D printers. Moreover, they learned the value of working in a multidisciplinary group. We expected some of these findings, such as an increased ability to work in teams. However, some themes were unexpected, including students explicitly appreciating the method of teaching that focused on experiential student learning through faculty mentoring. CONCLUSIONS: These findings can be used to guide additional research. Moreover, offering a variety of these courses is a necessary step to prepare students for the current and future workforce. Finally, these classes should include a focus on intentional team creation with the goal of allowing students to solve challenging real-world problems through ethical reasoning and collaboration.