Asee peer logo

Board # 11 :A Team Leader Model for Biomedical Engineering Design Team Project-Definition Training and Scalable Clinical Observation (Work in Progress)

Download Paper |

Conference

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Columbus, Ohio

Publication Date

June 24, 2017

Start Date

June 24, 2017

End Date

June 28, 2017

Conference Session

Biomedical Division Poster Session

Tagged Division

Biomedical

Page Count

5

DOI

10.18260/1-2--27687

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/27687

Download Count

766

Paper Authors

biography

Elizabeth A. Logsdon Johns Hopkins University

visit author page

Dr. Logsdon is a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University in the Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) and Engineering for Professionals Applied Biomedical Engineering Program. She is also the Director of the BME Design Studio - a facility that supports design efforts in many bioengineering courses at the University and within the Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design.

visit author page

author page

Robert Allen P.E. Johns Hopkins University

biography

Nicholas J. Durr Johns Hopkins University

visit author page

Nicholas J. Durr is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University and the Director of Undergraduate Programs at the Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design. He leads the Computational Biophotonics Laboratory at Hopkins. He received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from U.T. Austin. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Medical School in 2010 and an independent investigator at MIT from 2011 to 2014 as a Fellow in the M+Vision Consortium. Before joining Johns Hopkins, he was the Founder and CEO of PlenOptika.

visit author page

biography

Hien Nguyen Johns Hopkins University

visit author page

assistant professor of surgery
assistant professor of biomedical engineering

visit author page

Download Paper |

Abstract

A critical step in undergraduate biomedical engineering capstone design projects is problem identification and validation. This process requires training in observation and root-cause analysis. For projects developed around a clinical need, active training in observation for large groups (>50 students) is logistically challenging. Many clinical procedures limit observation groups to 3 students or fewer. Our team leader model, upon which this program was conceived, can alleviate these issues, reducing the logistical burden on clinical resources and enabling a peer education system. In this model, a capable student is selected to a leader for each project team in the fall of the previous semester.

A one-credit semester-long team leader course was developed this year to precede the traditional longitudinal, yearlong design team course in the Johns Hopkins Biomedical Engineering Department. Team leaders completed training in need identification and validation, and a weeklong clinical immersion to facilitate active learning of these skills in the week before the start of spring term. Leaders additionally received didactic training in team organization and operation. Subsequently, leaders selected their teams (based on their own criteria) and led them through targeted clinical observation in project areas of interest.

These project areas are selected from clinical problems proposed by individual clinical faculty. After faculty vetting of these submissions for appropriateness in scope, clinical faculty presented their clinical problems to the class. Leaders translated their learning of need validation to their teams, and together they develop their own criteria for project selection. The team leader course culminated with each team selecting and validating of a project for their capstone design course.

This model gave both leaders and team members the opportunity to do efficient clinical observation and shifted the logistical burden from the few faculty in the course and willing clinical faculty to the 15 team leaders and the clinicians promoting their projects of interest. Completing this training ahead of the capstone design course allowed teams to start with a deeper understanding of their project need and practical clinical constraints, a working relationship with their clinical mentor, and primer on team and project management. Results through the fall thus far demonstrate superior need statements and specifications in general, and prototype development much earlier than in prior years. Although the program is promising and scalable, the differences in education and prototype development in the year ahead will be a truer measure of impact.

Logsdon, E. A., & Allen, R., & Durr, N. J., & Nguyen, H. (2017, June), Board # 11 :A Team Leader Model for Biomedical Engineering Design Team Project-Definition Training and Scalable Clinical Observation (Work in Progress) Paper presented at 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Columbus, Ohio. 10.18260/1-2--27687

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2017 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015