Biomedical Engineering Program Research Articles

Application of a Prediction Problem-Based Learning (PPBL) Method in an Undergraduate Biomechanics Course

Abstract Challenge As biomedical engineers revolutionize medicine, biomedical engineering programs must adapt to the diverse learning styles of the current student population. Students are learning in new ways and instructional strategies need to be adopted. Novel Initiative Understanding generational attributes is crucial for developing effective teaching pedagogy. Generation Z, also known as “zoomers” and “digital natives,” will dominate higher education for the next decade. In response to the shift of how students are learning, a new teaching method called Prediction Problem-Based Learning (PPBL) was implemented in an undergraduate Biomechanics course. PPBL combines the retrieval of information with problem-based learning to enhance student engagement and active learning. Reflection Comparing this method to traditional teaching approaches demonstrated significant improvements in a course learning outcome and exam performances among students exposed to PPBL. These results suggest that PPBL fosters a deeper understanding of the material and promotes a more effective learning strategy. Further analysis and testing of this method are recommended to confirm its efficacy and explore its potential for broader application in biomedical engineering educational courses. This innovative approach aligns with the needs of Generation Z learners, who thrive in interactive and technology-enhanced educational environments, thereby providing greater opportunities for academic success and professional preparedness.

A Practical Research Methods Course That Teaches How to Be a Successful Biomedical Engineering Graduate Student

Should your department offer a course on how to be a scientist and a successful graduate student? We offer this course at George Mason University as a mandatory part of the graduate curriculum, but this is not common practice for graduate biomedical engineering programs. Graduate education in biomedical engineering is evolving rapidly, with an increasing demand for fundamental research skills, interdisciplinary skills, and professional development. We believe that graduate students will be more successful in their research activities if they are explicitly taught these skills at the beginning of their graduate coursework. This paper describes the design of this course in our bioengineering department.

Implementing a challenge-based learning experience in a bioinstrumentation blended course

BackgroundBioinstrumentation is essential to biomedical engineering (BME) undergraduate education and professional practice. Several strategies have been suggested to provide BME students with hands-on experiences throughout the curriculum, promoting their preparedness to pursue careers in industry and academia while increasing their learning and engagement. This paper describes the implementation of challenge-based learning (CBL) in an undergraduate bioinstrumentation blended course over the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsThe CBL experience was implemented in a third-year bioinstrumentation course from the BME program at Tecnologico de Monterrey. Thirty-nine students enrolled in two sections formed fourteen teams that tackled blended learning activities, including online communication, lab experiments, and in-person CBL activities. Regarding the latter, students were challenged to design, prototype, and test a respiratory or cardiac gating device for radiotherapy. An institutional student opinion survey was used to assess the success of our CBL implementation.ResultsStudent responses to the end-of-term survey showed that they strongly agreed that this course challenged them to learn new concepts and develop new skills. Furthermore, they rated the student-lecturer interaction very positively despite the blended format. Overall, students assessed their learning experience positively. However, implementing this CBL experience required a substantial time increase in planning, student tutoring, and constant communication between lecturers and the industry partner.ConclusionThis work provides an effective instance of CBL for BME education to improve students’ learning experience despite decreased resource efficiency. Our claim is supported by the student’s performance and the positive feedback from our industrial partner.

Phenomenological Evaluation of an Undergraduate Clinical Needs Finding Skills Through a Virtual Reality Clinical Immersion Platform

Clinical immersion programs have been widely used in higher education, particularly in biomedical engineering (BME) programs, to allow students to identify and evaluate the unmet clinical needs. However, due to limited space and extensive safety protocols required to enter hospitals, access for undergraduate students to shadow physicians is limited. BME students need to be trained to identify and evaluate unmet clinical needs through observation and experience to remain competitive in the medical device landscape. To be able to allow students to immerse themselves into clinical environments remotely and be able to visualize the full spectrum of healthcare workers and equipment that support a procedure beyond what is available through online video records, we have developed a virtual reality (VR) clinical immersion platform. The applicability and overall student satisfaction of using VR learning environments was investigated through a pilot undergraduate BME unmet clinical needs finding course in the spring of 2022. Pre- and post-course survey analyses revealed that the VR clinical immersion experiences did greatly increase immersion within a medical procedure, and students felt sensations of presence and embodiment. Given the results of this study, VR learning environments can provide a means for students to perform unmet clinical needs through virtual clinical immersion. However, these technologies to support environments should be readily accessible within the classroom.

Approaches to Address New ABET Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Criteria in Biomedical Engineering Curricula

The lack of diversity in engineering is a persistent problem with few signs of pending improvement. Efforts to promote diversity in engineering schools have produced modest gains. Based on a commitment to be a change leader and fueled by recent updates in ABET criteria to include diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEI-J) as tenets of engineering education, the biomedical engineering (BME) community needs to find new ways to address the issues of DEI for all groups in our curricula. In an attempt to redesign engineering departments to be more inclusive of all student populations, institutions of higher learning are reviewing programs, policies, and the ways they engage students. This paper provides BME programs with some thinking about the integration of DEI into areas of curriculum, assessment, faculty practice and faculty support, infrastructure, and climate for change. This study reports on curricular innovations attempted to date in order to serve as a resource for biomedical undergraduate engineering curricula. The authors have collected critical resources and literature related to integrating DEI into courses and content as well as assessment and evaluation approaches. Sections include resources for BME design, diverse anatomy and physiology, person-centered language, ethics, and assessment and evaluation approaches to measuring climate, faculty, and student impacts. In addition to providing resources, we propose that the ABET DEI framework is missing a critical component: justice. We feel that justice should be emphasized, particularly in biomedical engineering programs because our field has the unique opportunity to promote awareness of injustices and racial disparities in the design, development, and delivery of healthcare and medical technologies. While this paper presents examples of integration in several course types and across different topics, it is intended to inspire additional efforts by the BME community to make more concerted changes to promote DEI in our educational programs.Graphical abstractGraphical abstract demonstrating main themes and connections between different themes in the DEI-J framework presented in the paper. Created with BioRender.com.

Biomedical Engineering Students’ Perceived Learning Through Co-Curriculars

Background: Co-curricular student outcomes research has focused on connecting outcomes to activities based on the co-curricular type. Less work has explored what aspects of those co-curricular activities could lead to student outcomes. Purpose: Our research aimed to identify common elements of co-curricular activities that connected to students’ development of professional, career, or personal outcomes and can inform how we study and design co-curricular activities in engineering. Design: We recruited participants from one biomedical engineering (BME) program. We used a one-year series of four semi-structured interviews with fourteen upper-level BME students to explore students’ perceptions of their co-curricular learning. Using a qualitative, causal analysis approach, we identified elements of students’ co-curricular experiences in research or a multi-disciplinary design team, as well as other co-curricular experiences (e.g., internships, professional societies), that linked to professional, career, or personal learning outcomes that have been previously identified as important in engineering education. Findings: We identified patterns of connections between unique “experience elements” and a variety of “outcome categories” through participant activities we called “participant actions.” The most prevalent connections—those experience elements and participant actions that connected to multiple outcome categories—included the experience elements Independent Project Work, Project Work That Engages Multiple Disciplines, STEM Education Opportunities, and Mentorship from a Skilled Other as well as a participant action Reflecting on Experience. We found connections to the outcome categories of Leadership, Design, Business, Interdisciplinary Competence, Disciplinary Competence, Communication, and Career Direction Outcomes. Conclusions: Based on our findings, educators and mentors should consider the value of supporting students’ decision-making autonomy and multidisciplinary interactions in projects to support learning. They could also incorporate opportunities for students to teach each other technical content, receive structured mentorship, and reflect on their experiences as they are happening. Further, this work demonstrates a need to explore co-curricular learning processes in new ways that can lead to better understandings of students’ learning processes.

Relação entre gordura abdominal e do pescoço com distúrbios do sono em pacientes obesas

Abstract Introduction Obesity is one of the main public health problem worldwide and it has a negative short- and long-term relationship with women's health. Assessment of this disorder is essential, as is a body composition assessed by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) with the new region of interest as the neck. Objective To verify the association between abdominal and neck fat with sleep quality in obese women. Methods The sample, obtained from a Biomedical Engineering and Health Program database, was characterized by being obese female aged between 20 and 65 years. The tests performed were anthropometric assessment, sleep quality questionnaire, physical activity level, nutritional assessment, and body composition by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). For statistical analysis, the Shapiro-Wilk test, t test for independent samples, Kendall's Tau, linear and multiple regression and ROC curve were used. Results The sample consisted of 15 individuals with a mean age of 45 ± 11.10 years, neck circumference of 41.50 ± 2.61 and abdominal circumference of 128.20 ± 11.62. We found no correlation between the regions of interest and the sleep quality questionnaire. Regression analysis shows non-significant statistical values for abdominal fat. The statistical test proved that the new region of interest in abdominal fat is closer to better sensitivity and has a greater relationship with sleep quality. Conclusion there was no statistically significant correlation between the regions of interest and the sleep quality questionnaire. However, the abdominal fat region of interest was the point that presented the best association with sleep quality assessed by the Pittsburgh questionnaire.

Teaching computational systems biology with an eye on quantitative systems pharmacology at the undergraduate level: Why do it, who would take it, and what should we teach?

Computational systems biology (CSB) is a field that emerged primarily as the product of research activities. As such, it grew in several directions in a distributed and uncoordinated manner making the area appealing and fascinating. The idea of not having to follow a specific path but instead creating one fueled innovation. As the field matured, several interdisciplinary graduate programs emerged attempting to educate future generations of computational systems biologists. These educational initiatives coordinated the dissemination of information across student populations that had already decided to specialize in this field. However, we are now entering an era where CSB, having established itself as a valuable research discipline, is attempting the next major step: Entering undergraduate curricula. As interesting as this endeavor may sound, it has several difficulties, mainly because the field is not uniformly defined. In this manuscript, we argue that this diversity is a significant advantage and that several incarnations of an undergraduate-level CSB biology course could, and should, be developed tailored to programmatic needs. In this manuscript, we share our experiences creating a course as part of a Biomedical Engineering program.

ASSESSMENT IN PROBLEM- BASED LEARNING: AN APPLICATION TO HIGHER EDUCATION

This article presents the results of a research carried out in a Biomaterials course from the Biomedical Engineering program in a university in Colombia. The research assessed the implementation of the didactic problem-based learning strategy. The study population was made up of 106 students: 46 students from the experimental group and 60 students from the control group. The experimental group implemented the strategy in three stages: The first one, named planning stage, focused on the theoretical construction for solving the problem. The second stage attended to the characterization, where it was necessary to perform mechanical tests on the proposed instructional materials with the intention of evidencing the relevance for the proposed use. The last stage, named the prototyping, focused on the construction and testing of each prototype developed by each team. Subsequently, this allowed defining performance indicators as well as the application of surveys for acquired skills. Then, academic loss averages were compared. It is concluded that academic failure decreased, learning increased, positive reinforcement of topics raised and motivation boosted significantly. Finally, it was found that the main issues that students faced were: time management, poor organization and the belief that sharing tasks is the same as team-working.

Epistemological and educational issues in teaching practice-oriented scientific research: roles for philosophers of science

The complex societal challenges of the twenty-first Century require scientific researchers and academically educated professionals capable of conducting scientific research in complex problem contexts. Our central claim is that educational approaches inspired by a traditional empiricist epistemology insufficiently foster the required deep conceptual understanding and higher-order thinking skills necessary for epistemic tasks in scientific research. Conversely, we argue that constructivist epistemologies (developed in the philosophy of science in practice) provide better guidance to educational approaches to promote research skills. We also argue that teachers adopting a constructivist learning theory do not necessarily embrace a constructivist epistemology. On the contrary, in educational practice, novel educational approaches that adopt constructivist learning theories (e.g., project-based learning, PjBL) often maintain traditional empiricist epistemologies. Philosophers of science can help develop educational designs focused on learning to conduct scientific research, combining constructivist learning theory with constructivist epistemology. We illustrate this by an example from a bachelor’s program in Biomedical Engineering, where we introduce conceptual models and modeling as an alternative to the traditional focus on hypothesis testing in conducting scientific research. This educational approach includes the so-called B&K method for (re-)constructing scientific models to scaffold teaching and learning conceptual modeling.

Exploring Agency in Capstone Design Problem Framing

<strong>Background:</strong> Because of prior experience solving well-structured problems that have single, correct answers, students often struggle to direct their own design work and may not understand the need to frame ill-structured design problems. <strong>Purpose: </strong>Framing agency—defined as making decisions that are consequential to framing design problems and learning through this process—sheds light on students’ treatment of design problems; by framing, we mean the various actions designers take to understand, define, and bound the problem. Using the construct framing agency, we sought to characterize design team discourse to detect whether students treated design problems as ill- or well-structured and examine the consequences of this treatment. <strong>Method: </strong>Data were collected through extended participant observation of a capstone design course in a biomedical engineering program at a large research university. Data included audio and video records of design team meetings over the course of framing and solving industry-sponsored problems. For this paper, we analyzed three cases using sociolinguistic content analysis to characterize framing agency and compared the cases to illuminate the nuances of framing agency. <strong>Results: </strong>All teams faced impasses; one team navigated the impasse by framing the problem, whereas the others treated the problem as given. We identified markers of agency in students’ discourse, including tentative language, personal pronouns, and sharing ownership. <strong>Conclusions:</strong> Framing agency clarifies the kinds of learning experiences students need in order to overcome past experiences dominated by solving archetypical well-structured problems with predetermined solutions.

Perspectives of the Biomedical Engineering Program at UASLP after ten years - analysis and criticism.

The Biomedical Engineering (BME) bachelor pro-gram of the Faculty of Sciences in Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí (UASLP) was created in June of 2010, with the aim of training professionals with an integral perspective in the engineering field by considering a multidisciplinary approach to develop and apply technology in the areas of medicine and biology. After 10 years, our BME program has achieved national recognition. Despite of being an emerging program, this achievement has been obtained by the consolidation of our academic staff, the outstanding participation of our students in national and international academic events, and the historical graduation results. In our comprehensive evaluation, we report an overall terminal efficiency (completion rate) of 67% and a graduation rate of 47.2%, where these values are above the average for an engineering program in our institution. Additionally, the BME program provides students with solid skills and background to carry out research activities, which has resulted in a considerable number of alumni pursuing graduate studies or have already completed one. Our results show that 90% of our former students are working after graduation, but only 44% work in the field of biomedical engineering, since the regional labor market starts to saturate given the fact that, at present, students from six generations have completed our BME bachelor program. In this way, few graduates visualize the wide spectrum of job options where a biomedical engineer can impact, by their distinctive comprehensive and multidisciplinary training. Therefore, it is necessary to propose new curricular design strategies to provide our students with an academic training that allows them to enter a globalized world, where there is an even greater spectrum of engineering possibilities related to the fields of medicine and biology, in line with current trends.

Postgraduates of the biomedical engineering program at the University of Brasília, Faculty of Gama: who are they?

Postgraduates of the biomedical engineering program at the University of Brasília, Faculty of Gama: who are they?

Innovation in Biomedical Engineering Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This paper addresses challenges that arose during the on-going coronavirus pandemic and methodologies implemented in teaching a Biomechanics course in the Biomedical Engineering program (Biomedical and Electrical Engineering Discipline, Faculty of Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia). We aimed to address the requirements for a quick transition of the entire curriculum to efficient remote delivery of the course, which involved: (i) providing authentic learning experiences; (ii) keeping students motivated and engaged with their classes and team projects; and (iii) preventing students from cheating when completing online assessments. The specific tools, software packages and approaches employed to support the remote teaching and learning are presented and discussed in this paper. Effective and on-going communication with students was crucial for managing their expectations, engagement with the course materials and teaching team, retaining positive learning experiences and for their overall well-being. The Socratic approach used in developing the online assessments was able to promote students’ critical thinking, problem solving and self-reflection and assisted the teaching team in minimising online cheating.

Moving from Pedagogy to Andragogy in Biomedical Engineering Design: Strategies for Lab-at-Home and Distance Learning.

Engineering design courses are particularly challenging to deliver in online or distance modalities because of the hands-on, collaborative nature of the design process and the need for physical resources and work spaces. In this work, we describe how we rapidly transformed two design courses in the middle two years of the biomedical engineering (BME) program to an online format during the 2019 coronavirus pandemic. In addition to time and safety constraints, we identified access to design spaces with biochemistry, computing, electronic, computing, and manufacturing tools, and team-based learning as major challenges to distance learning in BME design courses. To this end, we mapped and translated various course and design activities to an online environment using a combination of customized at-home laboratory kits and distributed team structures. Drawing upon our pilot experience as well as principles from online and adult learning theories, we offer an overview of strategies to retain hands-on and team-based activities and rapidly implement BME design courses in online or distance modalities.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s43683-020-00043-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Design as a Feature ofBiomedical Engineering Education-Satisfying ABET and Preparing Students to Address Clinical Needs.

Design is an important aspect of biomedical engineering education. It prepares students to work as part of a team to develop systems that address medical and health-related needs-and it is required to be part of an accredited undergraduate engineering program. This work looks at the history of design requirements in the U.S. and the current state of biomedical engineering curricula with respect to design. As a growing number of programs have expanded their design program beyond the capstone project, some examples of innovative programs are described. There is no single way to address design education within an undergraduate biomedical engineeringprogram. However, intentional development of this component of the curriculum can enhance the impact on student learning and outcomes.

Creating Virtual Spaces to Build Community Among Students Entering an Undergraduate Biomedical Engineering Program.

Creating Virtual Spaces to Build Community Among Students Entering an Undergraduate Biomedical Engineering Program.

Biomedical Engineering: experiences in the research formation with MOODLE

The work shows the didactic experiences reached in the research formation of biomedical engineers in the Technological University of Havana (Cujae), during the development of courses (Project of Research I and II) in the Biomedical Engineering program, that contribute to the scientific and methodological development of the Work of Diploma like act of culmination of the university studies, with the integrated employment of the resources of a Learning Management System: MOODLE (Forum, Dynamic Presentations, Videos, WIKI, Tasks, Surveys, Questionnaires, etc.) and the Teaching Based in Problems (EBP), to achieve the appropriate motivation and research formation in the students from the curriculum.

A Path to Space Exploration: Systems Engineering Propels Williams

When Ashley Williams was in high school, she decided that she would become a biomedical engineer. She didn't know many people working in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields, but she liked the idea of a career that would allow her to use her talents and interest in math and science to help others. Williams enrolled at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and immersed herself in her major. While there, she joined Engineers Without Borders and led a biomedical engineering program to deliver unused medical equipment to hospitals in Guatemala. In the middle of her junior year, though, she came to the conclusion that something was missing. The question, as graduation loomed, was this: What did she really want to work on every day?

BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING – AN INTEGRATED APPROACH TO PHYSIOLOGY IN HIGH SCHOOL

The Illinois Math and Science Academy (IMSA) is a residential school for students of Illinois gifted in Math and Science. Several programs are offered during summers through the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), the outreach arm of IMSA, to ignite student curiosity and passion for science and math and foster interest in STEM. An additional benefit of these programs is that they provide participants with hands‐on inquiry driven laboratory experiences. One of the most popular programs offered is the week‐long Physiology and Biomedical Engineering program, which I have taught for the past several years. Stemming from a successful student activity in my Physiology course, the curriculum is designed to enable students to apply physiological concepts to real world applications using engineering techniques. Students are tasked with visualizing the relationships between the structure and function of the cardiovascular system through biomedical engineering ‐ the creation of heart models, which are designed, engineered, and built during the course of the week. This is followed by a discussion of the biophysics of the fluid dynamics of a closed circuit ‐ how pressure, thickness and resistance factor into blood flow. Although only the mechanical system of the heart is modeled due to time constraints, the electrical system is discussed in the context of the heart models built. Students also have the opportunity to model different pathological conditions in their heart models such as atherosclerosis and Crohn’s disease, and explain the biophysical, molecular and biochemical basis of their creations. Through model‐building and testing, students learn how to apply and integrate engineering principles and biophysics to understand the complex workings of the cardiovascular system.Support or Funding InformationCenter for Teaching and Learning, Illinois Math and Science Academy