Integration of Medicine and Robotics – an online teacher professional development program for STEM education

Abstract

Thomas. After almost 25 years of industrial experience in research, engineering, marketing and sales management and general management with several high technology corporations, he joined New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in 1995 as an assistant professor. He is currently the chair and professor of the Department of Engineering Technology, with a joint appointment in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Previous to that he served as associate dean of Undergraduate Studies for the Newark College of Engineering of NJIT. His research in industry was in the area of pacemakers and defibrillation, and his research at Medtronic Inc led to five patents. He was a principal investigator for a three year, $1 million NSF grant entitled Medibotics: The merging of medicine, robotics and IT, and was a co-principal investigator for a $2.5 million grant on pre-engineering workforce enhancement from the New Jersey Commission on Higher Education, as well as a principal investigator for a Whitaker Foundation grant. His current research is in biological signal processing, related to cardiovascular signals, and in enhancing STEM education through use of engineering principles. He has written over 50 articles in both journals and conference proceedings, in both the educational and biomedical fields. Dr. Rockland was the recipient in 2004 of the F.J. Berger award, a national engineering technology award presented by ASEE, and a 2000 award winner in Excellence in Teaching for NJIT, was named a Master Teacher in 2004, and was the chair of the Master Teacher's Committee. He is also very active in the Engineering Technology community, have served in numerous capacities for the Engineering Technology Division (ETD) of the American Society of Engineering Educators (ASEE), most recently as the chair for ETD, as well as serving as a commissioner on the Technology Accreditation Commission (TAC) for ABET. He was selected in 2011 as a Fellow of the American Society of Engineering Educators.

Remote Professional Development Opportunities for K-12 Teachers during a Pandemic

“…The Virtual Medibotics project was developed to create and implement a fully on-line professional development program that would enable STEM teachers to access the Medibotics teaching resources online and implement the Medibotics program in their classroom [12]. Through the utilization of the on-line approach, both asynchronous and synchronous delivery options were available to accommodate the range of activities undertaken, including readings, teacher contributions to discussion, and completion of assignments by teachers.…”

“…Thus, learning objects are any grouping of materials that is structured in a meaningful way and tied to a learning objective or outcome. They should contain the objective/outcome, a learning activity, and an assessment (Rockland, et. al., 2013).…”