Table 2 Course activities aligned with the Kolb learning cycle (summarized from Nagel, Lewis, and Ludwig 2017)

Concrete experience

Students select and work in multidisciplinary teams to gain empathy for members of the community with a chronic illness, such as metabolic syndrome. Students interact with and get feedback consistently and frequently with members of their team and members of the patient community throughout the experience on iterations of solutions.

Reflective observation

Students participate in weekly reflective journaling individually and in guided group discussions where they respond to prompts about their process and their developing solutions. There is an oral final where students reflect on the concepts required to maintain a creative design process and produce a quality product in the course.

Abstract conceptualization

Students learn in ways that are different from their typical experience. Engineering students often comment on how much they enjoyed the opportunity to work with people from outside their major and share their knowledge of the design process. Pre-nursing students often comment on their ability to work with technologies and contribute to the design process. Biology students often comment on increasing their creativity and learning processes for problem solving.

Active experimentation

Throughout the course students make prototypes of their product to gain useful feedback from community members. They begin with basic prototypes and iteratively make changes based on feedback from the patient community. They culminate by presenting a beta prototype to stakeholders.