Enhancing An Introductory Biomedical Engineering Course Using An Integrated Lecture Lab Approach

Over the past four years, the Introduction to Biomedical Engineering course at Bucknell University for non-majors has had a concomitant lab for the hands-on introduction of fundamental engineering concepts to the students. With the arrival of the first class of biomedical engineering majors into their introductory course, we have implemented a new teaching approach which is centered on the integration of lecture and lab. The underlying motivation of this new approach is to enhance retention of the fundamental concepts by students through the concurrent offering of lecture and hands-on laboratory experiences. We believe that this methodology has several benefits over traditional course formats where lecture and associated labs may be presented days apart. These benefits might include the ability to quickly address student misunderstandings which may arise during lecture, immediately reinforce complex technical concepts through hands-on activities and to provide the students with a real world application of the concepts. To implement this course, we have taken advantage of the small class size (13 majors) and the recent opening of a new biomedical engineering hybrid instructional facility. This facility includes wet bench capabilities, lecture facilities, a range of flow, pressure, temperature and mass transport equipment, wireless laptops, physiological data acquisition systems, and electronic instrumentation clusters. With this facility, we have the ability to directly integrate lecture and valuable hands-on activities. For example, in the area of biotransport, a range of integrated sessions have been created to reinforce the learning of both simple and complex concepts. For the introduction of fluid properties such as viscosity, students are able to form groups and utilize viscometers during the class session to explore the range of viscous behaviors without leaving the room. For concepts such as unsteady mass balances, students might spend the first half of a class session working in groups on a theoretical model of a recirculating drug infusion problem. Immediately following the solution of the problem, students then move to the wet benches to run an experiment which demonstrates the theoretical result just derived. Overall, we anticipate that this approach to integrating lecture and lab exercises will enhance the educational experience of the biomedical engineers. As the Biomedical Engineering P ge 10565.1 Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright 2005, American Society for Engineering Education Program incorporates direct assessment measures into the curriculum, the exact effects of this new teaching approach will ideally be identified.