"What Works" In Engineering Education? A Meta Analysis Of Vanth/Erc Biomedical Engineering Modules

The Vanderbilt-Northwestern-Texas-Harvard/MIT Engineering Research Center (VaNTH/ERC) for Bioengineering Educational Technologies has undertaken a series of studies to examine the effects of instructional innovation on learning outcomes. In this paper we summarize the nature, scope and results of these assessments. In the spirit of identifying evidence-based practices in education, we present estimates of the overall and conditional effects from 28 studies and sub-studies reported in 19 evaluation studies. The results suggest that VaNTH-sponsored innovations are effective, although some of the effects may be exaggerated or understated due to technical and procedural problems. This paper identifies which effects are trustworthy and which require additional examination before they can be incorporated (or not) into the knowledge-base on “What Works” in biomedical engineering education.