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Sharing Best Practices in Teaching Biomedical Engineering Design

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Abstract

In an effort to share best practices in undergraduate engineering design education, we describe the origin, evolution and the current status of the undergraduate biomedical engineering design team program at Johns Hopkins University. Specifically, we describe the program and judge the quality of the pedagogy by relating it to sponsor feedback, project outcomes, external recognition and student satisfaction. The general pedagogic practices, some of which are unique to Hopkins, that have worked best include: (1) having a hierarchical team structure, selecting team leaders the Spring semester prior to the academic year, and empowering them to develop and manage their teams, (2) incorporating a longitudinal component that incudes freshmen as part of the team, (3) having each team choose from among pre-screened clinical problems, (4) developing relationships and fostering medical faculty, industry and government to allow students access to engineers, clinicians and clinical environments as needed, (5) providing didactic sessions on topics related to requirements for the next presentation, (6) employing judges from engineering, medicine, industry and government to evaluate designs and provide constructive criticisms approximately once every 3–4 weeks and (7) requiring students to test the efficacy of their designs. Institutional support and resources are crucial for the design program to flourish. Most importantly, our willingness and flexibility to change the program each year based on feedback from students, sponsors, outcomes and judges provides a mechanism for us to test new approaches and continue or modify those that work well, and eliminate those that did not.

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Notes

  1. These activities are now part of the introductory course for all BME freshmen. Freshmen work in teams, however no seniors are involved.

  2. Technology used for synchronously integrating the Holter monitor with the accelerometer resulted from a 2004 design team project. It is still in use.

  3. This academic year, team each leader alone selected his/her own project first. Prospective team members who applied did so by applying to specific projects of interest.

  4. The Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design (CBID), which grew out of the undergraduate program, is the design center within the BME department. CBID is dedicated to educating the next generation of health care leaders and developing technology to improve human health around the world. It includes a 1-year MSE program and a post-graduate program.

  5. With 12 teams, presentations are held over 2 days, with 6 teams presenting each 2-h session. We allow 20 min for each team; 8 min to present, 12 min for questions and comments, and for transition.

  6. Team leaders earn an additional credit, which includes attending weekly team leader meetings.

  7. JHPIEGO is a Hopkins affiliate NGO dedicated to improving maternal child health in the developing world. The Birth Alliance is a partnership between JHU, JHPIEGO and Laerdal Global Health dedicated to saving lives at birth and helping babies breathe.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful for the financial support provided through multiple grants since 2001 from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance, The Maryland Technology Development Corporation and private donors. We thank Murray Sachs and Elliot McVeigh, past and current BME chairs, who have supported the design program since its inception, and thank Youseph Yazdi, CBID director who has provided support, resources, and a wealth of information about the commercial environment. The contributions of medical educator extraordinaire, Edith Gurewitsch, who has supported the design team program since 2002, have been invaluable to the quality of the program. Most importantly, we are deeply appreciative of the more than 1000 students who have passed through our program; without them we could not have the successes our program has had.

Conflict of interest

None of the authors report a conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles Street, Clark Hall 118C, Baltimore, MD, 21218, USA

    R. H. Allen

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    S. Acharya

  3. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    C. Jancuk

  4. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Physiology, Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    A. A. Shoukas

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  1. R. H. Allen
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  4. A. A. Shoukas
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Correspondence to R. H. Allen.

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Associate Editor John Desjardins oversaw the review of this article.

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Allen, R.H., Acharya, S., Jancuk, C. et al. Sharing Best Practices in Teaching Biomedical Engineering Design. Ann Biomed Eng 41, 1869–1879 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-013-0781-y

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