Paper Authors

Abstract

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

Main Menu Session 2209

UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION-RESEARCH WITH BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING LABORATORIES

Roger V. Gonzalez, Paul R. Leiffer LeTourneau University

Abstract As part of a larger endeavor to build upon a multi-disciplinary undergraduate engineering program, we have established a biomedical engineering laboratory as part of a distinctive curriculum for a Biomedical Engineering (BME) concentration. This laboratory is equipped with modern experimental equipment solely devoted to undergraduate education and research. Complementing this laboratory are exercises and procedures to orient the students to experimental equipment and its appropriate use and purpose. While these typical laboratory exercises orient students to the equipment and its proper use, the extended purpose of the laboratory is to use its set of experimental equipment as “tools” for students to answer educational/research hypotheses. Toward this end, students are required to formulate a question and a hypothesis. They would then use the proper experimental equipment and methods to verify their hypothesis. This larger task serves several purposes. It requires the students to (1) observe typical biomedical engineering phenomena, (2) formulate a hypothesis as to why the phenomena occurs, (3) develop an experimental methodology, and (4) gather the required experimental data to verify their hypothesis. Each student’s work is then arranged either in poster format or a conference proceeding, as if they were submitting their work to a conference. We believe that this experience educates all of our undergraduate engineering students in proper laboratory use, experimental design, and research methodologies.

Introduction

Undergraduate education in engineering has traditionally prepared students to excel at engineering analysis and design, with a much lesser focus has been placed on experimental methods, especially scientific experimental methods. This engineering education has traditionally been formulated by means of students taking courses in engineering science and design with supplemental laboratory experiences. These laboratory exercises, however, are usually a much smaller component of a course. While the traditional laboratory exercises are worthwhile, they rarely contain all of the elements that are necessary to formulate specialized experimental procedures that can provide the data needed to give insights into a independent scientific inquiry. That is, laboratory procedures are typically used only to show already established scientific events. Our attempt has been to establish a biomedical engineering laboratory which is used in a notably different manner than the methods that have been traditionally been used as well as recently developed in undergraduate engineering education. Toward this end, we have developed a biomedical engineering laboratory with a broad set of

Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2002, American Society of Engineering Education

Main Menu

• Citation

• Format
  • APA
  • APA - LaTeX bibitem
  • MLA
  • MLA - LaTeX bibitem
  • Bibtex
  • EndNote - RIS

Gonzalez, R., & Leiffer, P. (2002, June), Undergraduate Education Research With Biomedical Engineering Laboratories Paper presented at 2002 Annual Conference, Montreal, Canada. 10.18260/1-2--11184