Enhancing Student Engagement in the Graduate Seminar by Scaffolding Active Learning Activities

Biomedical engineering (BME) spans a wide range of research fields and professional activities. Most BME departments use a seminar series to introduce graduate students to exciting research conducted outside their own university, learn about professional opportunities, and enhance their understanding of related topics (e.g., ethics in BME, engineering education, entrepreneurship). However, even a stellar lineup of expert seminar speakers cannot appeal to all graduate students--even though the information presented may be very important to that student in the future. Can we initiate active learning assignments to increase student engagement with all speakers? Our BME department developed a strategy to scaffold active learning activities to enhance student engagement in the graduate seminars. All speakers supplied three papers for advance reading and students were required to generate questions based on reading the papers. The questions were provided to the speakers in advance of the seminar. Both students and speakers submitted short reflection surveys after the seminar. With increasing graduate experience, students were also required to critique the articles, evaluate presentation styles, and answer the questions of other students. The requirement to read the papers and generate questions definitely increased student engagement with the speakers. The increased personal engagement was evident in the critical thinking by the students as they subsequently discussed trends in different fields, evaluated presentation styles, and learned about different career opportunities. The increase in student engagement had the added benefit of creating a positive impression of our students with the speakers visiting from other institutions.