Merging Design Thinking into Translational Research in a Biomedical Engineering Laboratory (DT-TRBEL) Course

Laboratory classes offered in universities often fail to develop students’ ability to identify questions and encourage creativity to solve authentic problems. Lab exercises tend to provide clear step-by-step instructions, leaving little room for experimentation or creative thinking. Unfortunately, this approach can result in engineering students losing the skills they need to solve unprecedented challenges in their future professional careers. Biomedical engineering is particularly vulnerable to this training approach, given that students are taught to devise ideas to solve medical problems. To address this issue, the current study combined the curriculum designs of translational research and design thinking. This guided students in bringing biomaterials into the clinic and stimulated their interest in biomaterial development. The resulting course, called DT-TRBEL (Design-Thinking: Translational Research in Biomedical Engineering Laboratory Course), focuses on developing dental biomaterials, including material preparation, analysis, and cytotoxicity testing. The data was collected and evaluated through a survey of self-efficacy of creativity, student motivation, and learning scores of both the prerequisite course “Material Science” and DT-TRBEL. The study found that DT-TRBEL did not have a positive effect on overall motivation or the sense of self-efficacy regarding creativity. However, it did have a significant gender effect, benefiting female students more than male students. The discussion covers implementation and further directions for research.