A community-based, interdisciplinary rehabilitation engineering course

Abstract

A novel, community-based course was created through collaboration between the School of Engineering and the Physical Therapy program at the University of North Florida. This course offers a hands-on, interdisciplinary training experience for undergraduate engineering students through team-based design projects where engineering students are partnered with physical therapy students. Students learn the process of design, fabrication and testing of low-tech and high-tech rehabilitation technology for children with disabilities, and are exposed to a clinical experience under the guidance of licensed therapists. This course was taught in two consecutive years and pre-test/post-test data evaluating the impact of this interprofessional education experience on the students is presented using the Public Service Motivation Scale, Civic Actions Scale, Civic Attitudes Scale, and the Interprofessional Socialization and Valuing Scale.

Charity- and project-based service learning models increase public service motivation outcomes among dietetic students in a community nutrition course

“…Thus, it may be that increases in PSM scores rise concomitantly with the number of hours spent in SL experiences and that more than one semester or year is necessary to bring about more meaningful change. Interestingly, when Lundy et al's data were analysed by discipline, only engineering students were noted to have significantly increased PSM levels (22,23) . The researchers postulate that because the work of physical therapists is already service-oriented, the physical therapy students benefitted more from the technical experience of working with engineering students rather than the service element (22) .…”

“…Although statistically significant, the rise in the average PSM score was small (0•30 points), which the researchers attribute to the short, one-year programme duration (21) . Likewise, a pair of concurrent SL courses at the University of North Florida was created to teach engineering and physical therapy students the process of designing, constructing and evaluating rehabilitation technology for children with disabilities (22,23) . Lundy et al (22,23) found a significant increase in PSM at the conclusion of the semester, though again the change was small (0•20 points).…”

“…Likewise, a pair of concurrent SL courses at the University of North Florida was created to teach engineering and physical therapy students the process of designing, constructing and evaluating rehabilitation technology for children with disabilities (22,23) . Lundy et al (22,23) found a significant increase in PSM at the conclusion of the semester, though again the change was small (0•20 points). Thus, it may be that increases in PSM scores rise concomitantly with the number of hours spent in SL experiences and that more than one semester or year is necessary to bring about more meaningful change.…”

Engineering, Physical Therapy and the Community: A Service Learning Course

“…Pre-test and post-test data was first collected from students enrolled in this CBSL course during fall 2015. A detailed description of the course and the data collected for that year was previously reported elsewhere (8) . The course description is summarized as follows: Engineering students are partnered with physical therapy students to collaboratively address the needs of identified children with developmental disabilities in the community.…”

Constructivism-Based Methodology for Teaching Artificial Intelligence Topics Focused on Sustainable Development

“…In a globalized world, multidisciplinarity has become very important, since it is difficult to imagine that the teaching-learning process can occur in isolation. The benefits of multidisciplinarity have been mentioned by authors such as [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. In this approach has been developed a multidisciplinary course.…”