Jessica Chin

CAPSULE: AN INNOVATIVE CAPSTONE-BASED PEDAGOGICAL APPROACH TO ENGAGE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN STEM LEARNING

School children in general and high school students, in particular more often than not lose interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education. Underrepresented and female students are even more discouraged by STEM courses. Our investigation and interviews with high school teachers cite that the main reason for such disinterest is the disconnect between school and reality. Students cannot relate the abstract concepts they learn in physics, biology, chemistry, or math to their surroundings. This paper discusses a new capstone project-based approach that closes this gap. This work is an outcome of an NSF funded project called CAPSULE (Capstone Unique Learning Experience). We use the top-down pedagogical approach instead of the traditional bottom-up approach. The top-down approach relates the abstract concepts to exciting open-ended capstone projects where students are engaged in designing solutions, like products to solve open-ended problems. This top-down approach is modeled after the college-level capstone design courses. The paper presents the model, its details, and implementation. It also presents the formative and summative evaluation of the model after deploying it in the Boston Public Schools, a system heavily populated by the targeted student groups.Copyright

Using 3D Modeling and Neural Networks to Predict Time-to-Heal for Chronic, Nonhealing Wounds

Chronic, non-healing ulcers are expensive to treat and heal. Approximately 2% of the United States’ general population suffers from non-healing wounds. Conservatively, the cost of treating these chronic wounds is estimated to exceed

Evidence-Based Best Practices: Wound Healing Tracking and Assessment

50 billion per year. This is approximately ten times more than the annual budget of the World Health Organization. The prevalence of wound healing is similar to that of heart failure and cardiac diseases. However, unlike cardiac diseases little is known regarding the comparative treatments of wounds and their respective outcomes. Additionally, the field of monitoring and tracking wound care lacks the awareness compared with cardiac diseases.Copyright

Effective Use of Engineering in Teaching Secondary STEAM Courses: A Robotics Course Example

Standard medical practice is known to have a history of varying definition of “standard”. As with any industry with multiple entities, each entity defines their standards and expectations according to what they believe is their customers’ (i.e. patients) needs and preferences. Recently, our research on developing a predictive wound care assessment methodology and system has extended our study into analyzing evidence-based best practices in wound care clinics. Our research on wound healing predictive model systems, revealed key differences in operational practice between the clinics that were visited in different institutional settings. The scope of this study evaluates our observed wound care practice and wound care treatment to determine if there is a common set of effective practice that can be developed to better standardize care. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the operational practice and procedures at various community and teaching hospitals to determine if there is an ideal combination of tools and standard techniques that would be most beneficial to patient wound care. This paper will focus on methods of patient wound care. We will then present a model of “Evidence-Based Best Practices of Wound Care Assessment” that is based on the observation and interactions with various hospitals.Copyright

Tools and Components of Wound Healing Assessment

Global Learning Charter Public School (GLCPS) is an urban secondary school located in the city of New Bedford, Massachusetts. GLCPS educates students in grades 5–12. It is a Title I school with over 74% of the student population on free and reduced lunch. Historically, only 60% of students graduating from New Bedford move on to postsecondary education. It is the goal of our school to change this and increase the number of students entering post secondary education and more specifically to increase their interest in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) fields.GLCPS provides a unique educational experience where students demonstrate academic excellence and mastery of essential skills. These skills include: technology literacy, public speaking, global citizenship and arts exploration. Incorporation of STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics) is a continued goal for our school. After attending teacher educator training/professional development in engineering-based learning (EBL), we decided to create a robotics course, which fully embedded EBL into the curriculum. The goal of this robotics course is two fold: 1) Combine engineering, math, science, and art/creativity into one course; and 2) engineering-based learning can impact the way students learn STEAM principles, retain STEAM theory, and apply them to real world, relevant applications.The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how engineering-based learning inspired and impacted the development of a robotics course in an urban, financially disadvantaged, secondary charter school. Specifically, we detail how the principles and tools of the engineering-based learning pedagogy affected the development and implementation of this robotics course. Lastly, we will demonstrate how EBL and the robotics course have changed student perceptions of science, engineering, and math.Copyright

Investigating a Framework for Modeling and Analysis for Wound Progression

Chronic wound assessment and analysis has long been a major healthcare issue. Chronic wound management and treatment cost billions of dollars each year. The research to alleviate the burden of non-healing wounds and predicting when they will heal is progressing at incremental pace. Characteristics of a chronic wound are unique to both the patient and wound itself. Like a fingerprint, each wound has a unique set of properties that tell a story about its health and viability. Although each person’s wound is individual, there are a few underlying pathologies that are common amongst all wounds. For example, all wounds have a definite surface area, depth, and temperature at any given time. By knowing these common characteristics across all wounds, we can use both historical data and collected data to determine wound healing patterns and wound healing rates. The purpose of this study is to develop an algorithm that uses photography and statistical modeling to predict an approximate wound healing rate for lower appendage wounds. We focus on lower appendage wounds with a depth of 1–2 mm because lower appendage wounds account for approximately 70% of wounds seen at wound clinics.Copyright

Implementing the Capstone Experience Concept for Teacher Professional Development

Wounds are as unique as a fingerprint. A wound can be a tear, scrape or cut — simply anything that damages the protective layer of skin. Wounds occur anywhere on the body from a small paper cut to a large gash. Because the topology of a wound varies so significantly, current tracing and modeling methods fail to adapt to the changing environment. Similarly, traumatic wounds are a greater challenge to heal without infection due to their nature, size, depth and moisture. Presently, tracing and modeling methods are inaccurate and unreliable for wounds that exceed a certain depth. With any wound, non-invasive, full field methods are necessary to effectively measure and assess the severity of the wound. Due to lack of diagnosis options, wounds are expensive to treat and heal. There are few methodologies that exist to help affect the decision for clinicians regarding wound care, how wounds are evaluated, and how wounds are created. In the U.S., there are an estimated 2.5 million pressure ulcers treated each year in acute care facilities. The epidemiology of pressure wounds result in particular physiological principles that we can use to quantify and determine a baseline wound condition. At the moment, the physician and his experience rather than a standard diagnostic system determines the wound condition. This paper presents methods of quantifying wound progression and their impact thus far on patient care. It also provides open-ended research issues that support the need for a structured, systematic methodology for the modeling and analysis of wound progression. The purpose of this paper is also to disseminate a preliminary epistemology on wound progression and modeling in a quantifiable manner.Copyright