Disseminating Biomedical Engineering Concepts to 8th -12th Grade Teachers

In order to increase the exposure of K-12 students to biomedical engineering concepts, a statewide summer workshop funded by the Massachusetts State Department of Education was developed by the Biomedical Engineering Program at Western New England College in collaboration with Agawam Public Schools, a local school system. The objectives of this workshop included increasing the awareness of the biomedical engineering field, giving teachers educational modules to bring back to their own classrooms, and to help the teachers fulfill the requirements of the state’s science and technology curriculum that includes topics in biomedical engineering. The workshop spanned two weeks and included many topics, hands-on interactions, and two field trips. Topics included: the engineering design process, gait analysis, genetics, biomedical devices and control systems, biomedical modeling, technical presentation techniques, and the man-machine interface. Workshop instructors included professors from the College, as well as two teachers from Agawam Public Schools. There was a strong synergy between engineering experts and pre-college educators – the overarching philosophy of workshop was that both groups need to come together as equal partners to successfully bring biomedical engineering concepts into the pre-college students’ curriculum. Time was spent each day on activity called “putting it into practice” in which the pre-college teachers presented ideas of how to fit the topic presented the previous day into their own teaching plan. Essentially, this became an outline for a full lesson plan. At the end of the workshop the teachers developed at least one full lesson to bring back to their classroom. The teachers reconvened in the Fall of 2000 to discuss how well the new lessons worked. The workshop was a success with many teachers incorporating several concepts into their lesson plans.