Opinion Volume 10 Issue 4 - December 2017 DOI: 10.19080/CTBEB.2017.10.555791 Curr Trends Biomedical Eng & Biosci Copyright © All rights are reserved by Dale Feldman Is Working in Teams Necessary to use the Engineering Design Process to Solve Clinical Problems? Dale Feldman* Biomedical Engineering, USA Submission: November 21, 2017; Published: December 11, 2017 *Corresponding author: Dale Feldman, Biomedical Engineering, USA, Email: Opinion The scope of this Journal includes “the development and dissemination of knowledge [particularly to] coalesce the design and problem solving skills of engineering with medical and biological sciences.” The subject this paper will address is “the value of the use of teams in the engineering design process to solve problems”. First let’s address the value of the engineering design process vs. the scientific method in biomedical research. In the scientific method, the standard to use in biomedical research, a hypothesis is generated as a potential answer to an important question. An experiment is set up and carried out to prove or disprove the hypotheses. The results are looked at in terms of how they compare and follow from previous studies, what are the ramifications related to the original question and what needs to be examined next; further test the hypothesis or test a different hypothesis. For the engineering design process, instead of a question there is a problem or need. Instead of a hypothesis there is a design constraint(s) of what the solution has to be able to do. Experiments are done to determine if the solution meets the design constraint(s), which is similar to testing a hypothesis; in fact a design constraint can be written as a hypothesis. The big difference is that design constraints are quantitative and hypotheses are typically not. Also hypotheses are typically proven or not proven based on statistics and whether something leads to a statistically significant difference. A statistical difference, however, does not mean the difference is significant enough to matter; with hypotheses also not normally quantifying how big a difference is required. Essentially, the difference between the two is clinical significance. In the engineering design process, implicit in the problem is that it is a significant problem. Further, implicit in the design constraint(s) is that meeting it will have a significant impact on the problem. Currently, medical schools have determined one of the most important skills a clinician should have is the ability to apply math and science to physiological systems (to clinical medicine once they graduate); which is the definition of bioengineering. If asked, it would be an understanding of the scientific method (as well as math and science) in order to choose the best treatment for a given situation through their own interpretation of research studies. The skill they are actually looking for is to be able to use the engineering design process (at least the first few steps) in order to choose a treatment that meets or exceeds the required clinical performance constraints. This leads to the main topic of this paper: Is doing the design process as a team beneficial? ABET the accreditation agency for engineering requires that each approved program prove that the students can go through the design process plus have other skills that includes the ability to work in multidisciplinary teams. Although little guidance is given on what the ‘working in teams’ means or how to assess it, it most likely comes from the environment most likely encountered in the workplace. A big push in education is working in teams with TBL (team based learning) a popular model [1]. The typical structure, for TBL, is to have reading before class, with an individual test (in class), followed by a group test of the same material (with immediate feedback); with both to assure a good working knowledge of the material. This is followed by one or more open-ended questions that are discussed and answered (usually multiple choice) within each group and then there is discussion between groups with emphasis on understanding and/or resolving differences of opinions. This approach does many things well including: making students more responsible for their own learning; with more frequent incentives than the normal 2-4 tests per term. It also encourages discussion within groups and between groups to understand the correct answer (first two tests) or possible answers (the third test). Further, it assures that everyone in the group knows answers to factual questions and have multiple examples where the factual knowledge is applied; with rationale on why some choices are better than others. In addition, it helps students to hone their Curr Trends Biomedical Eng & Biosci 10(4): CTBEB.MS.ID.555791 (2017) 0060