Cultivating a community of practice in engineering education

Over the past several years, as part of an NSF supported engineering research center, we have worked in cross-disciplinary teams to enhance learning and instruction in the field of biomedical engineering education. Our collaboration involved working with faculty and consultants with expertise in learning science, assessment and evaluation, learning technology, and engineering. As cross-disciplinary teams we worked together to identify learning goals, develop new instructional materials that embody modern theories of learning, and implement appropriate formative and summative assessment plans to monitor our progress and make continuous improvements. In this paper we identify and organize the knowledge that arose from our collaborative process, and discuss the process that emerged as we formed an effective community of practice.