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Industry–Student Partnerships in Development and Sharing of Educational Content Involving LabVIEW

Abstract

The biomedical engineering (BME) students at our university often need hardware and software for data acquisition, automation and data analysis for their instrumentation laboratory classes and open-ended design projects every semester. We have teamed with the Education Division at National Instruments to form a collaborative partnership for the necessary resources and to create teaching material to facilitate students with their design projects. National Instruments have donated NI ELVIS system instrumentation equipment during the 2007–2008 academic year as well as continuous support to help students with their learning objectives. Since the students work on a number of diverse projects each semester their requirements vary. In order to meet their needs, we have a student-initiated supplemental training curriculum to train BME students on basic and advanced LabVIEW programming and a variety of other topics. The content of the instructional materials for the training is inspired by problems students encounter when working on their semester design projects. Many advanced students have volunteered to be Student Facilitators (SFs), who take the responsibility for the development and implementation of the instructional materials, which are provided in a seminar format. The supplemental curriculum that has been developed addresses a wide variety of topics and is chosen based upon student feedback. The use of students as teachers has resulted in a higher rate of acceptance of the material and minimizes the costs of providing the training. The hands-on seminars are offered to a wide range of the student body of the College of Engineering, including freshmen to graduate students, and emphasizes the mentoring of younger students by the older, more experienced students. The SFs are asked to evaluate the learning outcomes of the seminars they facilitate both qualitatively and quantitatively by creating and administering both pre- and post-seminar surveys. The surveys are designed to measure understanding of basic knowledge as well as any increases in student skill levels when using LabVIEW. After the SFs create, develop and evaluate the teaching materials and learning outcomes, National Instruments would then able to post the material on their website to enable other universities to utilize the content. Additional collaboration is planned between our university, National Instruments and the upcoming biomedical engineering department at The Hanoi University of Technology, Vietnam to provide their students with the organizational framework, teaching materials and instrumentation equipment necessary to teach LabVIEW. This paper will discuss the teaching material created by the SFs, the evaluation of the learning outcomes, and the benefits of the industry–student partnership to enhance student learning.

I. Introduction/Background

Instrumentation is an integral part of the Biomedical Engineering curriculum as it teaches the student how to select appropriate devices for electronically measuring the biomedical phenomena. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, two courses in bioinstrumentation are offered on an annual basis. BME 310, Introduction to Biomedical Instrumentation is a required, core course in the undergraduate Biomedical Engineering program geared towards sophomore students, while BME/ECE 462, Medical Instrumentation is an advanced course intended for

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Nimunkar, A., & Bernardoni, S., & Lark, T., & Watchorn, A., & Webster, J. (2009, June), Industry–Student Partnerships In Development And Sharing Of Educational Content Involving Labview Paper presented at 2009 Annual Conference & Exposition, Austin, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--5711