About

Rebecca Reck is a Teaching Associate Professor and Associate Head of Undergraduate Programs in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She holds a Ph.D. in Systems and Entrepreneurial Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Her primary research area focuses on research in BME education, including entrepreneurial mindset, educational technology, inclusive pedagogy, and instructional laboratories. Reck has authored a biomedical instrumentation lab manual and has contributed to numerous articles and conference proceedings related to engineering education, bioinstrumentation, and laboratory teaching practices. She has received awards such as the Mac Van Valkenburg Early Career Teaching Award from the IEEE Education Society and recognition from the Society of Women Engineers. Her professional experience includes roles as a Senior Systems Engineer and Systems Engineer at Rockwell Collins, Inc., and she actively participates in professional societies, serving on committees related to engineering education and accreditation.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Engineering
• Mathematics education
• Psychology
• Engineering management
• Medical education
• Knowledge management
• World Wide Web

Selected publications

• WIP: Identifying Barriers for Students with Disabilities in Stem Undergraduate Laboratory and Design Courses

  2025-11-02

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This research WIP paper describes a preliminary study about students' experiences and sense of belonging in undergraduate laboratory courses. We have anecdotal evidence that our courses were not inclusive of all students, particularly those with a disability. To better understand this problem, we designed and implemented a climate survey in Spring 2024 and carried out focus groups in Fall 2024. Although very few students participated, we analyzed survey data to understand those who were motivated to share their experiences. We split survey respondents into two groups: students with disabilities and students without disabilities. Respondents with disabilities reported a lower sense of belonging in laboratory and design contexts. We also find that the themes of comments from each group are different. These responses, combined with student feedback via focus groups, provide insight into issues students face in their laboratory and design courses. As we move forward with this project, our preliminary work informs how we may more effectively design future studies and begins to provide insight into how to make laboratory and design courses more inclusive.

  PublisherDOI

• Working effectively with your teaching team: Tips and Tricks from Laboratory and Design Course Instructors

  2025-08-21

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• WIP: Teaching Students to Synthesize Knowledge by Recognition of Connections

  2025-11-02

  articleSenior author

  This work-in-progress innovative practice paper provides preliminary findings on a method to encourage students to connect material across curriculum as part of KEEN's 3C framework [1], [2]. In an effort to motivate students without burdening them with a potentially time-consuming exercise, it was determined that it would be presented as extra credit with an emphasis on extra credit points coming more freely with a display of deeper insights. On average 62% of the 84 students taking the course completed the extra credit assignment. Students artifacts demonstrate a multitude of insights varying in depth of understanding and analysis. In addition, students completed survey questions derived from KEEN's entrepreneurial mindset. Student survey results show overwhelmingly positive feedback on the assignment's impact on their ability to perceive and synthesize connections. While detailed analysis is required to validate our assumption regarding the extra-credit nature of the assignment, this work-in-progress was encouraging and provided key takeaways on how to build a framework in which students might learn to build connections into their regular course routines.

  PublisherDOI

• Work In Progress: Adding Additional Methods to Identify Mistakes in an Undergraduate Biomedical Instrumentation Laboratory Course

  2025-08-21

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Beyond buildings: Designing and maintaining classroom laboratory spaces for physical accessibility

  Journal of Engineering Education · 2025-05-29 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Getting Started Teaching an Undergraduate Engineering Laboratory

  2024

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Engineering management

  A group of six faculty from laboratory and design courses at a large public university in the Midwest United States recently started a community of practice (CoP) for laboratory and design instructors.The goal of the CoP was to share resources and generate ideas for improving laboratory and design courses after the pandemic.We realized that many of us faced similar challenges during that time as we moved our courses to alternate formats and that we would have benefited from being able to share ideas and collectively brainstorm solutions.Since then, the CoP has grown to almost 40 members representing most of the departments in the college.We have hosted workshops, coffee chats, and other events to facilitate the exchange of ideas between members.Some of the popular topics have been facilitating teamwork; improving inclusivity and belonging; and training laboratory staff.These events have led to us curating resources in these areas.The purpose of this Tips and Tricks paper is to share these resources about teaching laboratory and design courses that we have collected within the CoP with the broader engineering education community, especially for instructors who have recently started teaching a course with a laboratory or large design project.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Development of a Community of Practice for Rethinking Best Practices in Post-COVID Experiential Learning

  2024-02-06 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  In the laboratory classroom, students have opportunities for design, problem solving, and exposure to real-world issues that are not usually present in traditional homework assignments.However, to operate effective laboratories, engineering departments and colleges must address challenges such as budget constraints, space limitations, class size, and limited teaching resources.The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated these issues and added more with the need for online and remote learning experiences without sacrificing the benefits of experiential learning.Laboratory and design courses were significantly impacted by the sudden move to remote delivery during pandemic lockdowns.Instructors and departments made decisions for adapting each course based on specific needs.Throughout that time, instructors in lab and design courses identified both the successes and the continuing challenges to remote and hybrid delivery.When courses returned to in-person modalities, instructors considered what lessons learned can inform the future of experiential learning-based courses.This paper describes development of a Community of Practice (CoP) of lab and design course instructors to develop strategies and best practices across one engineering college as we enter a new era of teaching and learning, post-COVID.This paper describes formation of the lab and design CoP, practical operating details of the CoP, as well as lessons learned from delivery of workshops and meetings.In addition to providing a road map for instructors to form a similar working group at their institution, we will share knowledge gained, commonalities across course types, and a summary of answers to the questions that inspired the formation of this CoP.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Changes to a Circuits Lab Sequence to Encourage Reflection and Integration of Experiences Across Related Courses to Explore New Solution Spaces to an Engineering Problem

  2024-02-07 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Engineering design requires the evaluation of trade-offs within a solution space to fit the constraints and demands of a specific application. An engineering curriculum provides its students a tailored series of courses to meet this goal. Course instructors anticipate students to regularly make connections to materials of past courses, assimilate the new information of the current course, and then explore expanded solution spaces. Disappointment arises when students fail to make these connections or often fail to recall fundamental concepts necessary to make informed decisions. In this paper we describe changes made to a junior level class to help students recall content from earlier courses on a particular topic in Electrical Engineering. This reflection better enables them to compare and contrast new material and even make connections with future course and industry solutions. Our initial survey indicates that student perception of these changes has been positive. Furthermore, a majority of the students responding to the survey suggest including similar exercises in lab modules on other topics.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Designing a Bioinstrumentation Lab for All Learners

  2024-08-03

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Combining the experiences of the instructor, teaching assistant, former student, and outside knowledge, we utilized participatory action research and the application of entrepreneurial mindset to improve the sense of belonging for all students in a difficult lab course. The biomedical instrumentation lab course is required for all undergraduate bioengineering majors and is a technical elective for several other engineering majors at a large public university in the Midwest United States. The course content has been challenging for many students. Additionally, some students have noted other challenges in the lab e.g., reading labels on parts, lights, and lab bench layout. The goal of this project is to reduce these challenges with both the content, the space, and the supplies. In the first phase of the project, the research team used methods from Universal Design for Learning (UDL), human centered design, and entrepreneurial minded learning to evaluate the laboratory space and course materials and generate ideas for improvement. Several ideas were investigated further for feasibility. In the second phase of the project, a few of these ideas were implemented in the course and feedback was solicited from current students. This paper will discuss the brainstorming process and outcomes as well as the recommendations for implementation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Tips for Creating a Functional Personal Knowledge Management System in Academia

  2024-02-07

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The zettlekasten method has gained a lot of popularity recently. About two-thirds of the videos that appear in a YouTube search for zettlekasten were added within the last couple of years. Content creators and researchers share the tools they use and how they have applied the zettlekasten method to their work. There even more blogs and other stories about implementing the zettlekasten method. All of these personal anecdotes make it hard to find information that will help someone new to the process determine if or how it will work for them. This paper will provide an overview of the method, the tools available, and tips for implementing zettlekasten in the context of engineering education research. The zettlekasten method is a system for organizing and connecting notes. In this system, a researcher takes notes on index cards then includes tags and links to other notes and ideas. The tags help the researcher identify connections between papers and ideas that they may have forgotten over time. In the past, it was implemented on physical notecards organized in boxes. Now, several digital methods make access and tagging much simpler. It has been credited for enabling Niklas Luhmann's prolific publications. As a new researcher, I was searching for a method to organize my ideas and literature notes on a new project with a limited budget. I stumbled upon the zettlekasten method and the numerous open-source tools that make it simple to implement on any platform. The other advantage is that many of these tools are based on markdown language, so the notes are stored in plain text. This makes it easy to access data on different platforms and is not dependent on a particular app to read each note. I have found it helpful to collect notes and make connections as I am exploring the literature on a new project. I am also able to quickly capture thoughts from my phone or any other device since my notes are stored in the cloud.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Carlotta Berry

  Rose–Hulman Institute of Technology

  49 shared

• Michael A. Gennert

  Worcester Polytechnic Institute

  49 shared

• Christopher Schmitz

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  40 shared

• Katherine Ansell

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  40 shared

• Jessica R. TerBush

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  39 shared

• John S. Popovics

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  36 shared

• Jennifer Amos

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  16 shared

• Deepak Moparthi

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  16 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Systems and Entrepreneurial Engineering, Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  2016

• Master of Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Iowa State University

  2010

• Bachelor of Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Rose Hulman Institute of Technology

  2005

Awards & honors

• Mac Van Valkenburg Early Career Teaching Award, IEEE Educati…
• Emerging Engineering Educator, Society of Women Engineers (2…
• WE Local ELiTE, Society of Women Engineers (2021)
• Outstanding SWE Counselor, Society of Women Engineers (2020)
• Bioengineering senior Genevieve Kerns shares internship expe…