Biomedical Signal Processing: Designing an Engineering Laboratory Course Using … · 2017-01-20 · Biomedical Signal Processing: Designing an Engineering Laboratory Course Using

Paper ID #8891

Biomedical Signal Processing: Designing an Engineering Laboratory CourseUsing Low-Cost Hardware and Software

Mr. Felipe L. Carvalho, Florida Atlantic University

Felipe L. Carvalho is a graduating senior in the Electrical Engineering program at Florida Atlantic Uni-versity (FAU), Boca Raton - FL. At FAU, he is a member of the Innovation Leadership Honors Programand as part of his undergraduate studies, is currently working on his Honors Project ”Biomedical SignalProcessing.” Additionally, he is a co-op at BlackBerry, where he works closely with principles of telecom-munications and software testing. He is a Tau Beta Pi certified member, where he holds the position of theChair of Induction and Student Outreach Committee. Mr. Carvalho is also an IEEE student member forthe 2013-2014 academic year. His research interests include Biomedical Engineering, Electromagnetics,Power, and Energy Systems.

Dr. Ravi T. Shankar, Florida Atlantic University

Ravi Shankar is a senior professor with the engineering college at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), BocaRaton, FL. He has research and teaching interests in computer engineering and science, and electrical andbiomedical engineering (see http://faculty.eng.fau.edu/shankar/ ). He is the director of a college-widecenter that focuses on systems issues (http://csi.fau.edu/ ). In that capacity, he has built up teaching andresearch collaborations among professors and students from multiple colleges (arts and letters, business,education, engineering, K-12, and science). The collaborative work is documented at several subjectspecific FAU websites. He has a PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, and an MBAfrom Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL. His doctoral dissertation was on early and noninvasivedetection of atherosclerosis. He has been issued 7 US Patents, with 3 of them in the biomedical arealicensed for commercialization by Florida Atlantic University. He is a Fellow of the American HeartAssociation.

c©American Society for Engineering Education, 2014

Work in Progress—Biomedical Signal Processing: Designing an Engineering Laboratory Course Using Low-Cost Hardware and

Software Abstract A Biomedical Signal Processing (BSP) laboratory course has a cost associated with its implementation and maintenance. This cost can sometimes be a barrier to be overcome by institutions intending to launch their own comprehensive laboratories for the processing and analysis of biomedical signals (biosignals). As a result, when it comes to BSP, many courses are designed to provide the students with a dry and theoretical application of mathematical methods only, forgetting to focus on hands-on projects to boost the students’ learning curve. This work in progress describes the design process of a comprehensive BSP laboratory course using low-cost hardware and software. We describe the methods utilized to generate the documentation needed for the course, and also a detailed list of the materials used and their main features. We divided the design process in two main categories: 1) analog circuit design; and 2) digital signal processing and software development. We provide details about these two categories and sub-divide the structure of the course into seven laboratory experiments to be completed individually or by a group of students. After the completion of this project, a collection of seven laboratory guides will be fully designed and this hands-on BSP course will be ready to be disseminated and implemented. In addition, all the materials and documentation created throughout this project are periodically uploaded into the group’s Smart System online webpage (http://smartsystems.eng.fau.edu/biomedical-signal-processing/) for easy and free access. Introduction The characteristics of a Biomedical Signal (biosignal) can be quite intimidating for students. This type of signal – characterized by high common mode signal, low amplitude differential signal, low frequency noise, drift, and cycle-to-cycle variability – is normally challenging to process and to analyze. Based on survey, students tend to do poorly in Biomedical Signal Processing (BSP) courses1. Because it is usually a difficult task for students to master BSP courses well, and because of its high implementation costs, a number of institutions still do not offer a course in BSP. Hence, this project is focused on the design of a BSP laboratory course for undergraduate students using low-cost hardware and software. There is an unmet need to expose undergraduate students to Biomedical Engineering (BME) in a simple and straightforward manner. Application of digital signal processing to processing of biosignals can be fairly difficult. A well designed and implemented laboratory course can suppress the details and provide easy to use interfaces to get students started in the right direction. We hope this will enhance interest and embolden them to undertake further studies and research in the field in later years.

Texas Instruments Inc (TI) has developed low- cost boards and software that will simplify exposure to DSP concepts3. TI’s Digital Signal Processing (DSP) baseboard and emulator are potentially free for any university developing and/or offering DSP labs; our innovation here is in providing added value. The developed laboratory guides will allow many institutions to quickly launch their own BSP labs. We have already made available online a series of tutorials

covering different laboratory guides’ topics, and by the completion of this project, we intend to upload all the laboratory guides and complementary documentation into the group’s Smart Systems webpage (http://smartsystems.eng.fau.edu/biomedical-signal-processing/). Our goal is to make BSP widely available, hence our decision to design around low-cost hardware and software, and to provide free and easy access to all of the documentation generated during this project. Materials One challenge to be overcome by institutions offering BSP laboratories is the cost of implementation and maintenance of such courses. Hence, this project is primarily concerned with minimizing the costs associated with the design and implementation of a BSP undergraduate comprehensive laboratory course. We hope that the chosen low-cost hardware and software, combined with our tutorials and laboratory guides made available online in our group’s webpage will stimulate many institutions to launch and offer their own BSP lab courses. With the cost limitation in mind, we decided to utilize TI’s digital signal processor OMAP L-138 LCDK as our main hardware in the processing and analysis of biosignals. This board also requires an additional Joint Test Action Group (JTAG) emulator to interface with the operational system. As far as hardware materials, these two portable and low-power boards provide sufficient hardware functionality to design lab experiments for BSP. For more specific experiments, such as the design of an analog Electrocardiogram (ECG) amplifier, other electrical components – such as resistors, capacitors and operational amplifiers – must be available for use. Below is a the detailed list of materials that our group is currently working on to design the proposed BSP laboratory course:

1. OMAP L-138 Digital Signal Processor LCDK TI’s OMAP L-138 is a robust, portable, and low-cost development board. The baseboard is Windows compatible, and also contains a fast ARM9 core processor, which enables the direct execution of 8-bit Java bytecode in hardware2. Because of the ubiquitous use of the Windows operational system in the academic setting, we chose this board mainly because of its straightforward USB-port connectivity to Personal Computers (PCs) running Windows XP or later. The dual-core architecture of the OMAP device provides benefits of DSP by enabling applications that require a high-level operating system. In addition, this board provides numerous possibilities for interaction with other hardware peripherals that can easily allow a wider range of applications not only for BSP, but also for DSP in general. The board also contains a built-in AC to DC converter (coder and decoder), which allows the sampling and reconstruction of analog biosignals to be processed onto the same hardware environment. Many reasons led our group to choose for the TI’s OMAP L-138, but in summary, this dual-core, low power, portable and easy to use DSP board fulfill the requirements we foresaw, such as low-cost and versatility.

2. XDS100v2 JTAG emulator

The XDS100 emulator is a low-cost USB-interface JTAG hardware reference design. It is compatible with Windows and its main functionality is to provide an efficient and the necessary connection between the baseboard and a PC. Similarly to the OMAP DSP, this emulator is also low-cost and low power, and it only requires a USB port to be powered. This emulator in parallel with the TI’s baseboard provides the sufficient hardware for the processing of digital signals.

3. Code Composer Studio™ v5 TI’s Code Composer Studio™ (CCS) is an integrated development environment (IDE) for TI’s embedded processor families. CCS provides an efficient IDE for the development and debugging of embedded applications. The software is based on the Eclipse open source software framework, which offers an excellent software framework for building software development environments and it is becoming a standard framework used by many embedded software vendors. CCS also includes a compiler for the OMAP family, a source code editor, project build environment, simulators, and real-time operating system. We are utilizing the CCS environment to develop, debug, test, and implement our algorithms. CCS is compatible with C and C++ high-level programming languages, which is also a convenient feature, since both C and C++ are the widely used programming languages. In summary, the free and online available CCS software combines the advantages of the Eclipse software framework with advanced embedded debug capabilities from TI resulting in a compelling feature-rich development environment for the deployment of embedded systems.

4. MATLAB® MATLAB is a high-level language and interactive environment for numerical computation, visualization, and programming. With MATLAB, one can analyze data, develop algorithms, and create models and applications. In this project, MATLAB provides the main computational tool and environment for the use of the Digiscope program.

5. Digiscope Digiscope is a MATLAB program that allows students to design and run digital filters on pre-sampled ECG signals without doing any programming6. The program comes with a library containing a series of pre-sampled ECG signals and an extensive list of signal processing tools and techniques. This free and straightforward MATLAB program is being incorporated into our course as a step prior to the design of algorithms to be implemented onto the OMAP DSP hardware. Since the use of simulation tools under appropriate technical supervision (i.e. by a Teaching Assistant or a Professor) generates better results in the learning process3, even using pre-sampled values, Digiscope may assist the students with a better insight on what the expected outcomes will be like prior to the actual code development and implementation.

6. Windows PC The OMAP baseboard is compatible with both Linux and Windows operational systems. For convenience purposes, in this project we are having the board to interact with the Windows

operational system only – that is, Linux is out of this project’s scope. TI requires a minimum of 1 GB of memory, 300 MB disk space, and 1.5GHz single core to run the Code Composer Studio (CCS) v5 software. In parallel, Mathworks requires a minimum of 1 GB of memory for MATLAB only, 1024 MB RAM, and Pentium 4 or better processor. Course Background The proposed BSP Laboratory course is targeted to undergraduate students majoring in Electrical Engineering (EE), Biomedical Engineering (BME), or related fields. The course is being designed as a 3000-level course, that is to say, for students in their third year into engineering programs. For EE majors, the course would be offered as an elective, while for BME majors it would be a required class. The proposed laboratory is being designed as a 3.00 credits class – preferably offered twice a week, giving the students sufficient time to complete each experiment. In order to create an efficient learning environment, we also propose this course to be offered to a maximum of 30 students per section. We believe that 15 groups is the ideal number for a hands-on course, allowing one Professor and one Teaching Assistant (TA) to supervise and assist the students with questions, troubleshooting, and circuit analysis. By the completion of each experiment, each group needs to turn in a laboratory report comprising of all tables and graphs embedded in the laboratory guide, and their C-language code implemented. In addition, each group must demonstrate their Digiscope simulations to the TA as it will be part of the student’s grade. Each experiment shall be graded as follows:

Pre-lab 15% Digiscope simulations 15% C/C++ code 30% Tables and Graphs 40%

Table 1: Experiments’ Grading Breakdown Students Background We are targeting this course to students who are familiar with basic computer programming, and with electrical circuits concepts. A basic understanding of a high-level computer programming language – preferably C – can be helpful, but is not required, as we intend to develop this skill throughout the course. The laboratory guides will provide a series of walk-through tutorials that will lead the students to successful results even if they don’t have a strong background in computer programming. However, a solid understanding of mathematical algorithms and electrical signals is necessary for this class. For this reason, classes such as “Intro to C” and “Circuits 1” would provide all the prerequisites necessary for this course. Though MATLAB is a tool used throughout the proposed course, there is no need for prior experience with it – as it will mainly be used as the platform necessary to run the Digiscope program. Thus, incoming students are not expected to know MATLAB language. Nonetheless,

we wish to introduce the students to certain MATLAB computations during specific experiments, but all the knowledge necessary to perform such simulations shall be provided in the laboratory guides in a simple and straightforward manner. Cost of Implementation Assuming an order of 15 lab kits containing the necessary hardware components for this course’s deployment, the implementation costs would be roughly $ 4,050.00, which includes 15 OMAP L-138 LCDK, and 15 JTAG XDS100 Emulators. TI also offers an ECG Front End Performance Kit (ADS1298ECG), that we are considering working with it. The ADS1298ECG is compatible with the C500 processors (OMAP family), provides simultaneous 24-bit signal sampling, an ADC converter, and also a built-in programmable gain amplifier. The main features of this additional hardware involve its easy-to-use evaluation software (compatible with Microsoft™ Windows XP and Windows 7), and the ability to export data in simple test files for post processing. We are considering this product to acquire data in a more accurate and safer manner. Also, it would allow the students to record and store their own ECG signal file, which would potentially engage them more to the course. If no partnership with TI is possible – which is unlikely since the company has an active University discounts program – and assuming the inclusion of the ADS1298ECG, the lab cost of implementation would be elevated to $ 7,035.00. Below is a detailed list including the retail price of each hardware device: Item Retail Price per

Unit (in dollars) Link

OMAP-L138 Low-Cost Development Kit

$195.00 http://e2e.ti.com/group/universityprogram/educators/w/wiki/2063.omap-l138c6748-lcdk-kit.aspx

XDS100v2 USB JTAG Emulator

$75.00 http://e2e.ti.com/group/universityprogram/educators/w/wiki/2063.omap-l138c6748-lcdk-kit.aspx

ADS1298ECG Front End Performance Demonstration Kit

$199.00 http://www.ti.com/tool/ads1298ecgfe-pdk

Table 2: Retail Price of each Hardware Device Methods Considering that the targeted students are in their third year, each experiment needs to be carefully designed in order to retain the student’s interest. It is imperative to provide the students with a series of detailed and comprehensive steps to avoid frustrations. For this reason, each laboratory guide is being designed in the form of a tutorial, that is, each document is a series of instructions-to-be-followed in order to achieve successful results. We believe that a laboratory guide formatted as such would appeal more to the targeted students, than large paragraphs of instructions.

Each laboratory guide follows the same structure:

A. Introduction: A brief theoretical introduction to provide the students with all the information needed from circuit design, software development, or digital signal processing. In the lab guide introduction, we also offer the students with an overall motivation to conduct that particular experiment, as well as the challenges that will be tackled.

B. Pre-lab: Before each experiment, the students should answer a series of 5 quick questions. The pre-lab’s role is to allow the students to recapitulate the key points of the theory that will be needed during each experiment.

C. Procedures: This section of the laboratory guide contains the procedures that each student/group must take in order to complete the experiment. We provide a list of steps, diagrams, circuit schematics, and screenshots in the format of a compelling and easy-to-follow guide. In this section, students can also find practical examples and code samples. The goal of each experiment is to not only introduce the students to BSP, but also to develop their computer programming skills, hence the need for detailed and clear instructions.

D. Results: In this section, the students can find tables and graphs that need to be completed for grading purposes.

This work in progress will be considered successful upon the completion of seven laboratory guides that will provide a hands-on approach to learning about signal processing through the application of digital signal processing methods to biomedical problems. Thus, in order to achieve the final laboratory guides there is a need to first fully comprehend the hardware architecture of the OMAP baseboard and its software development environment. For this reason, during the past months, our research group has executed numerous experiments involving audio signal processing. Now we are transporting our findings and techniques with audio filtering to the design of each experiment utilizing ECG signals. We have already developed a series of tutorials and posted them on our Smart Systems webpage. In order to achieve the project’s main goals, we divided the project in two main parts 1) the analog design; and 2) code development and implementation (utilizing MATLAB’s Digiscope for simulation, and CCS for the final C –language code implementation). Additionally, we structured the course into seven parts. We are designing each experiment to introduce the students to different aspects of BSP4, in an incremental fashion, on the same original (a 3-lead Electrocardiograph) signal. The proposed seven laboratory guides are as follows: 1. Emulation of typical external resources such as oscillators and oscilloscopes:

In this part of the project, we researched low-cost alternatives to expensive oscillators and oscilloscopes. Our goal was to utilize software and low- cost embedded hardware to generate electrical signals (thus replacing hardware oscillators), and to allow observation of electrical signals (thus replacing hardware oscilloscopes), respectively. We found two alternatives: Digiscope and WinDSK8.

a. Digiscope is a MATLAB program that allows the user to design digital filters and process normal and abnormal pre-sampled ECG signals. The script also includes a

“function generator” tool, which can be used to generate numerous types of sinusoids, triangle, and square waves.

b. WinDSK8 is a freely available, highly useful, and versatile Windows-based program with which the user can execute a wide variety of real-time signal processing algorithms4. It also includes an “oscilloscope” function, which is able to acquire analog electrical and audio signals from our DSP, and display these waveforms on a computer screen.

This lab guide was structured as a tutorial, where we provided step-by-step instructions, screenshots, and block diagrams. By the end of this experiment, the students will expose exposed to the software tools mentioned above, and will also be able to have some experience in designing basic digital filters (on Digiscope). In this experiment, we guide the students to remove a 60 Hz low-frequency noise of a pre-sampled abnormal ECG signal, using Active Filters.

2. Signal Transduction – Building an analog Electrocardiogram (ECG): This experiment covers the analog circuit design of an ECG Amplifier. We analyze the characteristics of low-pass, high-pass, band-pass, and band-stop analog filters to build an ECG amplifier. The necessary components for this experiment include: resistors, capacitors, UA741 operational amplifiers, DC batteries, aluminum electrode tape, and an analog oscilloscope (which can be replaced by the OMAP and WinDSK8 combination). We encourage each group to observe a member’s ECG signal on the oscilloscope’s screen. The goal of this lab is to teach concepts such as differential and common mode gain, and low pass filtering.

3. ECG signal – Distinguishing normal sinus rhythm: If the ECG Front End described in the last section (Cost of Implementation) is indeed considered, it will be implemented in this experiment. This experiment’s main goal is to analyze real ECG signals – either acquired by the ADS1298ECG, or by the analog ECG amplifier built in Experiment #2. If using the ECG amplifier built in Experiment #2, that amplifier’s output can be directly connected to the OMAP’s analog input, which will allow it to be further sampled and displayed by winDSK8’s oscilloscope function. The ECG signal acquired by ADS1298ECG follows a similar path, but now the signal is sampled before it is connected to the OMAP L-138 baseboard. Regardless the signal acquisition tool used, both techniques allow the signal to be displayed on a computer screen, which will then permit the students to observe the normal sinus rhythm in the ECG waveform and the naturally varying heart rate.

In addition, we include the processing and analysis of both normal and abnormal pre-sampled ECG signals on Digiscope. By combining the use of Digiscope and WinDSK8, we expose the

students to two ways of distinguishing normal sinus rhythm: one from pre-sampled values, and another from real ECG signal acquired in the lab.

4. Signal Filtering – Reducing biosignal drift and offset:

This experiment’s goal is to take the output of Experiment #3 for further processing. We intend to provide the basics of digital filtering and look at the advantages, disadvantages, and differences between analog and digital filters. A more mathematical approach is usually how this topic is approached. As seen in Tompkins5, concepts such as Z-transform, Transfer Function, and the Z-plane Pole-Zero Plot are typically covered when introducing students to digital filters. This type of approach lacks, however, in hand-on exercises, which is what we are striving for in this proposed BSP laboratory. In this experiment, we intend to implement the use of Digiscope in the first stage of the digital filter’s design, which may provide the students with a better understanding of the expected outputs. Subsequently, we intend to cover simple C-language code development for signal filtering onto the OMAP’s baseboard. By the end of this experiment, students will have an understanding of the theory behind digital filters, but more than that, a real hands-on experience with the processing of ECG signals acquired in Experiment #3. The necessary hardware devices for this experiment are the OMAP L-138 LCDK, the JTAG Emulator, and a computer running Microsoft Windows™. The necessary software tools for this experiment include MATLAB (platform necessary to run Digiscope), and Code Composer Studio (C-language development environment for the OMAP family).

5. Identification of the zero crossing points to average and display the averaged biosignal:

This experiment will cover techniques for averaging the biosignal. Averaging is desired in order to visually observe normal and pathological ECG signals. We will also use it to extract features for automated pattern recognition.

6. Pattern recognition from the averaged signal:

We will use the averaged signal to identify the normal sinus rhythm; this experiment will be an extension of Experiment #5, ad pattern recognition is only possible after averaging the signal.

7. Simple diagnostics from pattern recognition:

At the basic level, we wish to automatically detect cases of low and high heart rates. This is not pathological for a fairly broad range of heart rates. Students can achieve these via transcendental meditation (or deep and slow breathing) and in-place jogging, respectively. At the advanced level, we wish to extend the lab to identify pathological conditions such as myocardial infarction. For this, we will access available online databases to acquire such data. This experiment will cover techniques for feature extraction from biosignals and consequent diagnostics. This advanced part will serve to connect the lab work with real world applications.

All the experiments covered in this proposed BSP laboratory are designed to be compatible with TI’s OMAP L-138 LCDK. Each laboratory guide is written upon this group’s achievement of the expected outcomes. Thus, all the proposed techniques are previously tested to assure their quality. We have been designing the laboratory guides as follows:

I. Depending on the topic to be discussed in the laboratory guide—e.g. sampling, filtering, pattern recognition—we first conduct a similar experiment using non-biomedical signals. In general, we have been processing tunes (pure sinusoid signals) and audio signals. The deterministic behavior of such signals provides a better understanding of the OMAP processor, as well as accurate results that confirm the response expected.

II. After conducting the experiment using a deterministic input signal and observed the output of such system, we now modify the experiment to the context of BME. This involves the processing of real signals – such as the output signal of the ECG built in the experiment 2 – or the processing of pre-sampled signals.

III. Once the experiments are conducted, i.e. we process and analyze the proposed biosignal, we write the laboratory guides and tutorials for that particular series of BSP experiments.

Anticipated outcomes The anticipated outcomes of this project are:

1) To prepare the above listed tutorials and make them available online along with all the software and circuit schematics; and 2) To develop a comprehensive Biomedical Signal Processing Engineering Lab that can be replicated easily.

Conclusion and Project Status So far we have completed the laboratory guide of Experiment 1, we have accomplished the design and specification of the analog ECG5 (Experiment 2), and signal filtering (Experiments 3 and 4). In addition, we completed the tutorial on how to design and build this ECG, the tutorials on how to get started with the OMAP processor, the tutorials on how to get started with the Code Composer Studio v5, and a brief tutorial on the OMAP L-138 processor. All of these comprehensive tutorials guides are already available online in the group’s Smart System online webpage (http://smartsystems.eng.fau.edu/biomedical-signal-processing/). References

1. Li, L. and Li B., Design of Experiments in Biomedical Signal Processing Course, 30th Annual International IEEE EMBS Conference, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, August 20-24, 2008.

2. Klostermann, M., Christ, O., Mankodiya, K., Vogt S., and Hofmann U.G., OMAP 3 Based Signal Processing For Biomedical Engineering Teaching, 17th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO 2009), Glasgow, Scotland, August 24-28, 2009.

3. Damassa, D.A., Simulation Technologies in Higher Education: Uses, Trends, and Implications, ECAR Research Bulletin 3, 2010. Boulder, CO.

4. Welch, T.B., Wright, C.H.G. and Morrow, M.G., 2011, Real-time Digital Signal Processing from MATLAB to C with the TMS320C6x DSPs, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 436p.

5. Tompkins, W.J. and Webster, J.G., 1981, Design of Microcomputer-Based Medical Instrumentation, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 496p.

6. Tompkins, W.J., 2000, BIOMEDICAL DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING – C-Language Examples and Laboratory Experiments for the IBM® PC, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 359p.

Paper ID #8905

’Historical’ Rapid Design Challenge for Bioengineering Senior Design

Prof. James D. Sweeney, Florida Gulf Coast University

JAMES D. SWEENEY is Professor and Chair of the Department of Bioengineering and Software Engi-neering at Florida Gulf Coast University. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Biomedical Engi-neering from Case Western Reserve University in 1988 and 1983, respectively, and his Sc.B. Engineeringdegree (Biomedical Engineering) from Brown University in 1979. He is a Fellow of the American In-stitute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical andElectronics Engineers. He served as the 2009-10 Program Chair and 2010-11 Division Chair for theBiomedical Engineering Division of the ASEE.

Dr. Kristine R. Csavina, Arizona State University, Polytechnic campus

Dr. Kristine Csavina recently joined the faculty of the Department of Engineering & Computing Systemsat Arizona State University Polytechnic campus, where she is the Associate Director for EngineeringProgram Innovation. Currently she is the instructor for the senior capstone design experience and ac-tive with the ABET accreditation process for the department, among other courses and responsibilities.Dr. Csavina came to the Polytechnic campus from Florida Gulf Coast University, where she was oneof the founding faculty of the U. A. Whitaker College of Engineering. As an assistant professor from2007-2012, she helped develop the curriculum for the bioengineering design courses and was involvedin teaching courses from the sophomore to senior levels. Dr. Csavina received a Bachelor’s degree inMechanical Engineering from University of Dayton in 1992 and a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from ArizonaState University in 2003. Her research interests range from motion analysis of human motion in move-ment disorders, orthopedics and sports to engineering education research in student learning, pedagogicalapproach, and K-12 outreach initiatives.

Prof. Lisa Zidek, Florida Gulf Coast University

Lisa A. Zidek is the Associate Dean in the U.A. Whitaker College of Engineering and Associate Profes-sor in Bioengineering. She received her PhD in Industrial Engineering Health Care Management from theUniversity of Wisconsin. She has served as the Vice President of Student Development for the Institute ofIndustrial Engineers. She is an ABET Program Evaluator for Industrial Engineering, Systems Engineer-ing, Industrial Engineering Technology and General Engineering programs. Her research interests arein engineering education, with particular emphasis on engineering entrepreneurship and service learning.She was selected to participate in the 2009-2010 Florida Campus Compact Engaged Scholarship Fellowsprogram.


‘Historical’ Rapid Design Challenge for Bioengineering Senior Design

Introduction For a number of years we have introduced students (in their teams) to the bioengineering senior design experience at Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) with a ‘rapid design challenge’ (RDC), inspired by a challenge reported previously by Tranquillo and Cavanagh1. Kelly and colleagues at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln have also adopted and published recently on their own variation of this approach2. Goldberg and colleagues at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill have integrated a challenge-based approach into their biomedical engineering senior design sequence, but using design problems that run throughout a semester3. Cordray and colleagues from the VaNTH/ERC coalition have described the broader effectiveness, replicability, and generality of challenge-based instructional modules in bioengineering4. The senior design RDC experience here at FGCU within our B.S. Bioengineering degree curriculum has been very popular, and an effective means to jumpstarting students to more effectively working in their teams, ‘upping the ante’ on open-ended design expectations for the senior year, and giving students and teams an opportunity for early success (and failure) in a quick but intense ‘low stakes’ design challenge prior to committing to their full-scale ‘higher stakes’ senior design projects. In the fall semester of 2013, the lead author as FGCU bioengineering senior design instructor took a different tack to the subject matter of the RDC, which previously had focused on technically simple medical device problems. A ‘historical’ theme was used where students were called upon to envision that they were biomedical engineers of the year 1900 – and their task was to design a novel electrical stimulation device to required (and at their option preferred) specifications and using only the technolog(ies) and knowledge of that time. The intent of this ‘historical’ rapid design challenge was to (i) constrain solution pathways to technologies based for the most part on simple (but perhaps elegant) principles of physics and engineering (reinforcing their knowledge and confidence from earlier coursework in physics, mechanics, circuits, and instrumentation), (ii) encourage students to use their life-long-learning skills for information searching to explore the technologies and inventions of the time (including patents), and (iii) introduce a different and thought-provoking ‘fun’ twist to an already successful RDC process. This approach also opens up a wide range of new RDC themes for each academic year. This paper reports on the details and outcomes of this ‘historical’ rapid design challenge format for bioengineering senior design, including faculty and student perspectives and lessons learned. A Rapid Design Challenge To Jumpstart The Bioengineering Senior Design Experience The rapid design challenge described here occurs in the first few weeks of an overall senior design experience in bioengineering at FGCU that is a two-semester sequence (in the fall the 2 credit-hour BME4884 Bioengineering Senior Design I, and in the spring the 2 credit-hour BME4885 Bioengineering Senior Design II). The preceding junior year in the B.S. Bioengineering curriculum includes foundational design courses that include EGN3641C

Engineering Entrepreneurship (3 credit hours), EGN3433C Design for Manufacturing (2 credit hours), and BME4800C Bioengineering Product Design (3 credit hours). The schedule for BME4884 Bioengineering Senior Design I initiates with team formation and the rapid design challenge, then assignment of teams (of two to four students) into their full two-semester design projects (typically with clients in local industry and/or health care), and through the remainder of each fall semester progresses teams through the design process (including problem definitions, team mission statements and contracts, development of project Houses of Quality including competitive benchmarking, pertinent FDA regulations and engineering standards, patents and intellectual property, and structured brainstorming leading into project design solution concepts and selection). The course also includes aspects of professional development, and post-graduation planning. A roundtable design review late in the semester leads into the two main deliverables for the first semester – a team portfolio of all work accomplished (up to the point of selection of a lead design solution strategy) along with a team poster presentation (open to the program faculty and staff). Learning outcomes for this course include those focused on application of technical and engineering design skills and professionalism, and also refinement and demonstration of effective communication skills via design documentation and presentations. In the second semester of bioengineering senior design, teams carry their work forwards through engineering analysis, prototyping, and testing with multiple design reviews. Ethical considerations including risk-benefit, human factors, potential global and societal impact of design solutions, aspects of manufacturing and costing, design for the environment including product life-cycle, and protection of potential new intellectual property are also included. This second semester of bioengineering senior design culminates with teams preparing comprehensive design portfolios and with team presentations in an open-to-the-public (including project clients and mentors) poster forum and celebration. A rapid design challenge has been included at the initiation of our bioengineering senior design experience each year since the fall of 2009. This approach was originally modeled after the work of Tranquillo and Cavanagh at Bucknell, who described their methods and experiences with a biomedical engineering senior rapid design challenge requiring design and build of “a device for a third-world clinic to infuse a cholera treatment solution” (and subject to multiple constraints and performance metrics)1. Our goals with this version of a rapid design challenge (which to date has focused on various versions of relatively simple medical device designs) have very much included those stated by Tranquillo and Cavanagh; namely, that each annual problem should “(1) be of interest to students, (2) have a solution that is technically simple enough to be built in a short amount of time, (3) allow for many types of viable solution concepts, (4) have a high probability of success in the allotted time limit, and (5) be presented in such a way as to create an environment where healthy competition is rewarded and risks and creativity are encouraged.” In addition, we have used the rapid design challenge to introduce students to working in their teams (which usually are kept intact after the rapid design challenge is completed and as students take on their full-scale senior design projects) and team dynamics, as well as to introduce students to the documentation and presentation expectations in senior design.

The ‘Historical’ Rapid Design Challenge For the fall semester of 2013 a new direction was introduced to the senior design rapid design challenge – that of adding a constraint that the problem to be addressed and solved was set in the year 1900 and that the only resources and knowledge that could be brought to bear had to be of that time period. As described earlier, our goal with this new version of the design challenge was not only to introduce an unusual and hopefully fun ‘twist’, but also to encourage students all the more to consider and use simple approaches to their solutions and prototypes (ideally drawing upon their knowledge and skills from earlier coursework in physics, mechanics, circuits, instrumentation, etc.). We were also intrigued to see if students would make use of their life-long-learning skills for information searching to explore the technologies of the time (including patent searching), which was an option but not requirement for them. The specific problem assigned was within the context of bioelectricity and electrophysiology, and was conveyed as follows.

- Problem Statement - Imagine that it is the year 1900 and you aspire to design and use an electrical stimulation device that can reliably produce single pulses of ‘rectangular’ milliamp level currents through resistive loads on the order of 1 kOhm and for controlled durations on the order of a millisecond. By ‘rectangular’ we mean a current that is quickly switched from zero, up to some constant amplitude, and then back to zero. Design, build, test and document such a prototype device according to the following constraints and specifications. The device:

• Must be powered by a constant voltage of 12 V or less (to mimic the simple batteries of the time).

• Can utilize wires, resistors, capacitors, and/or simple mechanical switches. • Can make use of simple principles of mechanical clocks or timer mechanisms of the time,

as well as principles of Newtonian mechanics (Newton’s Laws of Motion were published in 1687!).

• Cannot use electrical actuators (e.g. electric motors, electromagnetic switches), • To meet a basic test specification, should safely produce a single 1 mSec rectangular

pulse of amplitude 1 mAmp through a 1kOhm resistor (test load which mimics the impedance of living systems).

While it is not a requirement of the Rapid Design Challenge (RDC), it is desirable that the design be able to be controlled so that additional amplitudes and pulse durations can be produced (in the same range as the above test spec; for example, durations of 1, 2, 3, 4 mSec etc. and amplitudes of 1, 2, 3, 4 mAmp etc.) It is desirable that the total expense for materials, parts, etc. needed by each team to prototype and test their designs not exceed $20. In any case, students will not be reimbursed … for expenses exceeding $20 per team. Teams have at their disposal the resources and stock supplies of (the college). This project will be carried out in teams of two or three; as possible these will be the same teams you will work in throughout Bioengineering Senior Design I and II. This project is a “challenge”

to do your best job (using your existing design, engineering and technical, creative, and communication skills) in:

• rapidly designing, • building (at least as a functional prototype), • testing (at least to verify that the requirement of meeting the basic test specification can

be achieved), and • documenting (on an RDC poster) your device.

The schedule for the challenge this year was as follows (Table 1) and included only two weeks of work (in other years we have allotted as much as four to five weeks), starting up in the second week of classes. Table 1. Rapid Design Challenge Schedule And Deliverables As Conveyed To Students In

The Fall 2013 Semester.

Date Topic In-Class Deliverables Due

26-Aug

Team Formation; Rapid Design Challenge Initiation

Launch RDC Initial Project

Planning

None; but initiate drafting of Customer Needs, Target Specs &

Metrics; time permitting Brainstorming on Design Concepts & Approaches

2-Sep

Labor Day Holiday, but keep the work progressing!

No Class Meeting

but Teams Schedule a 15

minute “Check-In”

with Dr. X on the Tuesday or

Wednesday

Due for upload (by 5 pm on Wed. Sept. 4) are Problem Statement,

Customer Needs, Target Specs & Metrics,

Concept Classification Tree or Fishbone Diagram

9-Sep

Rapid Design Challenge Showcase with Posters

(Print posters by the Friday 9/6)

RDC Posters with Prototype

Design Demonstrations (posters must

document performance in meeting specs)

Posters; also design notebooks

While baseline content of the RDC poster was specified by the instructor, teams were otherwise challenged to make use of and document their best skills in engineering, design (including prototyping and testing) and presentations as drawn from prior coursework. Subsequent to the “Rapid Design Challenge Poster Showcase” where teams presented their designs and results to the dean of the college, and program faculty and staff, the course lead instructor in a later class

period reviewed and summarized the overall achievements of all teams in meeting the RDC requirements and preferences, recognizing special successes and strategies. This class meeting also included a roundtable discussion with the entire class on individual and team reflections from the RDC. Students were asked prior to this open discussion and celebration of the RDC to write and submit a one to two page individual essay describing up to five lessons learned via the RDC. Lessons learned could be “any aspect of the RDC project that could give each team and/or team member an improved perspective or plan for the year’s full senior design project.” Interested students were also referred after the challenge to an excellent published review on actual designs and approaches to solution of the RDC problem in the time period around and leading into the year 19005. Outcomes, Assessment, and Evaluation The nineteen students registered for Bioengineering Senior Design I in the fall semester of 2013 were organized into seven teams (of two or three students) for the rapid design challenge. By the completion of the challenge for the poster presentation showcase, all seven teams had arrived at at least one functional prototype (and several teams had explored multiple prototype strategies). All prototypes fairly met the challenge requirements in terms of power supply, and simple components and principles of the time period (including exclusion of electrical actuators). Solutions included many of those to be expected for making a quick and reliable electrical contact (conductive balls or rods rolling down a variable inclined ramp or tube and striking contacts to make and then break connection through a circuit with one or more fixed or variable resistors) as well as some creative spring-loaded designs (including a mousetrap!) and one very innovative design incorporating a photo-flash and photo-diode. For this latter design, the student team appropriately documented invention and patenting of various photodiode designs at and prior to around 1893. Special recognitions were made by the instructor to teams with an especially impressive calibration curve for pulse duration control, a team with the most rigorous test data set on reliability meeting the main test specification (1 mA through 1 kOhm for 1 mSec), and a special ‘innovation’ award for the team with the photodiode approach. Seventeen of the nineteen students submitted the requested personal reflections essays, listing up to five ‘lessons learned’ each from the RDC experience. For assessment and evaluation of the immediate impact of the RDC, ‘lessons learned’ as reported by each student were compiled into a spreadsheet and then organized into main categories. Table 2 conveys the frequency of student responses for each main category (from most frequent to least), along with sample quotes from students. Not surprisingly, the truly rapid nature of the challenge reinforced in over half the students responding (categories in Table 2 with 9 or more responses) the immediate importance of project time management and planning (88% responding); team skills and responsibilities (76%); communication skills (59%); knowledge and use of engineering, math and science (59%); skills in prototyping, testing, and design iterations (53%); and the importance of brainstorming, concept generation, and concept selection (53%). Less frequent and likely more individual responses were in the areas of poster preparation and presentation skills (24%) project budgeting and costing (18%), and hands-on technical skills (6%) (all areas where most of our students are typically very well prepared prior to senior design). The unique constraint of this new ‘historical’ rapid design challenge was appreciated by two students (12%), although this was not really intended to serve as a ‘lesson learned’.

Table 2. Categories, Response Numbers, and Sample Quotes from Students on Immediate ‘Lessons Learned’ from the Rapid Design Challenge

Category Response

# Sample Quotes

Time Management and Planning

15

“crucial to keep goals and deadlines in perspective… this was the first project where my partner and I made realistic timelines in order

to account for unexpected problems” “I feel that I could have persuaded the group (including myself) to make a schedule for the

project and stick to it”

Team Skills

13

“compartmentalize tasks to everyone’s strengths. We worked much more efficiently once we designated everyone certain sections and

everyone knew what they were responsible for” “for the upcoming project, we need to organize our roles from the

beginning to ensure we complete our milestones on time”

Communication Skills

10

“communication is one of the key aspects to being successful in this project” “communication is essential to finish and complete the

ideas”

Knowledge and Use of

Engineering, Math, Science

10

“one thing that I took from this project was a better appreciation for the subjects covered in our bioengineering curriculum” “real, in-the-moment experiments will never be exact to what was expected based

on the theory”

Skills in Prototyping, Testing, and

Design Iterations

9 “as a team we learned that changes in prototype design may be

inevitable” “simple changes or small errors that are overlooked can make the difference”

Brainstorming, Concepts, and

Solution Selection

9 “I feel that my group put forth great brainstorming ideas to come up with an “out of the box” idea along with a backup project” “early

brainstorming is the key to getting the project going”

Poster and Presentation

Skills

4

“… related to our poster and presentation. I learned that having some early feedback can help us correct and/or add elements” “a

presentation poster does not have a lot of space… had to trim down my section several times”

Budgeting and Costs

3

“I learned how to save money on building materials while on a tight budget” “another lesson learned in the process was to take care of

our budget”

Appreciation of Unique

Constraints

2

“unique problem of building our own solution to a 1800’s technology posed an interesting case”

“stipulation of using pre 1900 technology made me think how hard inventors and scientists had to think outside the box to prove theories

and invent … technologies”

Hands-On Skills

1 “interesting lesson that I took away from the RDC was becoming more comfortable with biomedical equipment”

An additional indirect assessment of students’ assessment of RDC impact in jumpstarting their senior design experience was carried out in February of 2014 (six weeks into the second semester of senior design) in order to compare longer-term perceptions of the RDC value versus those from the reflections essays carried out just subsequent to the challenge. Eighteen students responded to this anonymous survey. Students were provided with the categories listed in Table 2 and asked to indicate as many as five (or at their option fewer) areas where they felt that the RDC “provided significant value to you and/or your team as you initiated the senior design experience.” Highest rated categories were: knowledge and use of engineering, math and science (67%); skills in prototyping, testing, and design iterations (67%); the importance of brainstorming, concept generation, and concept selection (67%); team skills and responsibilities (61%); and time management and planning (56%). Value placed on poster preparation and presentation skills increased to 44% (in comparison to 24% in the early reflections essays), perhaps through some students recognizing that their end-of-semester poster presentations in December had benefited from the RDC experience. Value placed on the RDC lessons in the unique constraints of the RDC rose to 50% (from 12%) and hands-on technical skills value rose to 39% (compared to 6%). Value placed on the RDC experience with communication skills fell somewhat to 33% (from 59%) and budgeting and costs remained about the same at 17% (compared to18%). Discussion and Conclusions Overall, introduction of a ‘historical’ theme to our bioengineering senior rapid design challenge this year appears to have been a success, with all teams arriving at functional and tested prototypes – and with a range of interesting and fun solution strategies. The constraints introduced into the problem statement also successfully motivated students to pursue relatively simple and achievable designs, while leaving the door open for teams to still pursue especially creative ideas. Since it was not a requirement of the RDC that teams carry out literature and/or patent searches into the time period and content of the RDC problem, only a few teams spent significant time in these areas. In hindsight this is understandable given the very tight timeline that was imposed this year (only two weeks). An advantage to running such a design challenge over such a brief period of time is that it can be completed quickly with still substantial student ‘lessons learned’ without overly subtracting from the time students in their teams have to launch into their full two-semester senior design projects. To quote from one student’s reflection essay: “The Rapid Design Challenge for this year was very unexpected and fast paced… There were several things that I learned from this project and I’m grateful to have had this experience to get me ready for the final senior design project.” In terms of student ‘lessons learned’, this rapid design challenge had clear impact (both immediate and longer-lasting) on many students and their teams in recognizing the importance of and iterating on their methods for project time management and planning, and with team skills (roles and responsibilities, dynamics, etc.). Students and teams also valued the RDC experience in various aspects of ‘getting the rust’ off of their engineering and design skills – being sure to use their knowledge of engineering and science, practice with brainstorming and concept generation and selection, as well as with prototyping, testing, and design(s) iteration. To quote another student:

“Overall this project was a very demanding and challenging scenario that allowed me and my teammate a headfirst dive into senior design while allowing us to flex our critical and creative muscles.” The ‘historical’ theme introduced into our bioengineering senior design rapid design challenge this year potentially also opens the door to a host of new challenge problem themes in future years not only here at FGCU but also at other institutions that have or will adopt this or similar methods. As Kelly and colleagues have noted for their rapid design challenge, “the development of additional, applicable design problems with easily definable criteria and constraints that can be fully realized in two weeks for $25 is a major challenge for faculty”2. Cracking open the vast history of scientific exploration and invention of medical devices and technologies should readily yield numerous fun yet challenging design themes for students in our field. References 1. J. Tranquillo and D. Cavanagh. “Preparing Students for Senior Design with a Rapid Design Challenge.”

Proceedings of the 2009 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, June, 2009. 2. A.M. Kelly, D. Jones, R.M. Hoy, E. Curtis, A.K. Pannier, and R.R. Stowell. “Implementation of a ‘Rapid

Design Challenge’ in a Cross-Disciplinary Senior Capstone Design and Evaluation of Device Performance.” Proceedings of the 2013 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, June, 2013.

3. R. Goldberg, R. Dennis, and C. Finley. “Integrating Hands-On Design Experiences Into the Curriculum.” Proceedings of the 2010 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, June, 2010.

4. D.S. Cordray, T.R. Harris, and S. Klein. “A Research Synthesis Of The Effectiveness, Replicability, And Generality Of The VaNTH Challenge-Based Instructional Modules In Bioengineering.” Journal of Engineering Education, 98(4), pp. 335–348, 2009.

5. L.A. Geddes. “The First Stimulators: Reviewing the History of Electrical Stimulation and the Devices Crucial to Its Development.” IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Magazine, August/September, pp. 532-542, 1994.

Paper ID #9462

Using Guided Design Instruction to Motivate BME Sophomore Students toLearn Multidisciplinary Engineering Skills

Dr. Amit Janardhan Nimunkar, University of Wisconsin Madison

Amit J Nimunkar received his B.E. in Electronics Engineering from the University of Mumbai, India in1999, M.S. in Bioengineering from the University of Toledo, Ohio in 2000 and Ph.D. in Biomedical En-gineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin in 2009. He is currently the AssociateFaculty Associate in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His teaching spe-cialty is on the topic of Biomedical Engineering Design and Bioinstrumentation and has taken initiativeto develop hands-on blended learning based courses on the same topics. His research interest is on globalhealth and engineering and currently working on projects in Honduras, Ethiopia, India and Vietnam. Hehas received the Recognition Award for Achievement in Global Engaged Scholarship in 2013 through theWisconsin Without Borders at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Professor of the Year Award in2012, through the Biomedical Engineering Society at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a numberof teaching awards.

Dr. John P Puccinelli, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Dr. Puccinelli is an Associate Faculty Associate in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. He beganhere as student near the start of the UW-BME program and earned his BS, MS, and PhD in BME. Heis interested in hands-on instruction – teaching and developing courses related to biomaterials and tissueengineering, as well as design. He was awarded the BMES Student Chapter Teaching Award in 2011 and2013 and the Polygon Outstanding BME Instructor Award in 2012.

Mr. Matthew S BollomDr. Willis J. Tompkins P.E., University of Wisconsin, Madison

Willis J. Tompkins received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the University ofMaine at Orono in 1963 and 1965, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in biomedical electronic engineer-ing from the University of Pennsylvania in 1973. He is currently Professor of Biomedical Engineering andElectrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he has been on thefaculty since 1974. He previously served for five years as Chair of the Department of Electrical and Com-puter Engineering. His teaching specialty is on the topic of computers in medicine, an area in which hehas developed two courses. One of these two courses, he has evolved and taught for 40 consecutive years.He has received a number teaching awards including the University of Wisconsin Chancellor’s Award forExcellence in Teaching and the Theo C. Pilkington Outstanding Educator Award from the BiomedicalEngineering Division of the ASEE. His research interests include development of microprocessor-basedmedical instrumentation, on-line biomedical computing, and real-time computer processing of electrocar-diograms. Dr. Tompkins is a Life Fellow of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers),a Founding Fellow of the AIMBE (American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering), and anInaugural Fellow of BMES (Biomedical Engineering Society). He is a past President of the IEEE EMBS(Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society) and a past Chair of the ASEE Biomedical EngineeringDivision. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in Wisconsin.


Using Guided Design Instruction to Motivate BME Sophomore Students to Learn Multidisciplinary Engineering Skills

Abstract

Biomedical Engineering (BME) students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison participate in team-based design throughout the curriculum for six sequential semesters. Student teams work on hands-on, client-based, real-world biomedical design problems solicited from healthcare professionals, local industry, community members, and life sciences and clinical faculty. Through the design process, the students learn a variety of professional skills on topics including engineering notebooks, written and oral reports, engineering ethics, intellectual property, FDA approval, and animal/human subjects testing. The students also have the opportunity to learn as they are needed, various technical skills including computer-aided design, finite element analysis, machining/fabrication, electronics and electrical measurement and design, LabVIEW, MATLAB and microcontroller programming, mechanical testing, and basic laboratory techniques related to biomaterials and tissue engineering. As our student population has grown, we have had an increasing challenge to informally and effectively teach our students these cutting-edge skills that will enable them to be better engineers. In addition, our BME Student Advisory Committee (BSAC) has expressed interest in having more formal, directed training in a guided fashion early in the curriculum.

In order to effectively teach these important professional, technical, and life-long skills, we developed a new sophomore-level lecture/laboratory course, BME 201, “Biomedical Engineering Fundamentals and Design.” We offered it for the first time in Spring 2012, and it has been taught twice so far. The weekly lecture focuses directly on professional skills, and introduces students to the department’s five areas of study (bioinstrumentation, biomedical imaging, biomechanics, biomaterials/cellular/tissue engineering, and healthcare systems) through lectures by faculty in those areas. These lectures were recorded during the first offering so that the videos can be viewed outside of class, and the lecture time can be repurposed for a more blended learning experience in future offerings thus creating weekly modules.

The weekly laboratory period focuses on directly training the students in technical skills,

such as those listed above that were previously offered on an ad hoc basis, in order train students to solve a multidisciplinary guided design project using these skills in teams. The laboratories were designed and are taught in conjunction with BME faculty instructors by undergraduate BME student assistants (SAs), allowing them to gain valuable teaching experience while giving our sophomore students an opportunity to learn from and interact with their peers. The guided design project requires the student teams to incorporate the knowledge and hands-on skills they learn during the semester to design and fabricate a bioreactor to measure the mechanical properties of soft biomaterials that they synthesize in our tissue engineering teaching lab. Throughout the project, the students maintain design notebooks, prepare product design specifications, create and present oral presentations, and communicate their design and results by preparing a technical report.

As this is the only course where all sophomore BME students are together, we have had the

unique opportunity to teach them in an open forum led by their upperclassmen peers. Through

this multidisciplinary, blended, hands-on approach, early in the curriculum, students have obtained the skills they need to be successful in their future projects, to make informed decisions about their BME area of study and careers, and to enable them to become better engineers.

Introduction

The Biomedical Engineering (BME) Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison developed a rigorous six-semester, team-based design curriculum for our undergraduates to solve real-world, client-based design problems when the department was founded in 1999 as shown in Figure 1.1,2 Teams of four or five students work on up to 41 different, real-world design projects every semester. This design sequence breaks down class boundaries, forms mentored relationships, actively involves each student in the evolution of the design courses and in the department, and engages the students in active learning.3-6 However, our Biomedical Student Advisory Committee (BSAC), as well as alumni and industry partners, have indicated a need for more direct technical design skill training and direct academic and career advising early in the curriculum to enhance student creativity and resourcefulness on subsequent team-based design projects and help them make informed decisions regarding academic and career choices. There are other BME departments in the country who offer multiple semesters of design and/or peer mentorship, however the students in BME at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are expected to build a physical prototype at the end of the semester for each of the six semesters of design.

Figure 1: The BME design course sequence throughout the curriculum where each semester students work in teams of four or five on client-based design projects. During Phase 1, the junior students are teamed with and mentor the sophomore students; in Phase 2, historically the sophomore students worked on real-world problems independently. Beginning in 2012, we changed this course into the BME Fundamentals and Design course discussed in this paper. In Phase 3, the juniors start on a more complex project that they typically carry forward into Phase 4: senior year and capstone design. The goals of each course are as follows:

Sophomore 1 BME 200

Junior 1 BME 300

Sophomore 2 BME 201

Junior 2 BME 301

Senior 1 BME 400

Senior 2 BME 402

Phase 1: Peer

Mentoring

Phase 3: Independent

Learning

Phase 4: Capstone Design

BME Design throughout the Curriculum

Phase 2: Guided-design Fundamentals

BME 200 – First-semester sophomores are mentored and in part advised by first-semester juniors in teams of four-five on a real-world design project achievable in one semester. This model promotes peer-to-peer learning and enhances leadership qualities.

BME 201 – This course is the focus of this paper. Historically this course consisted of sophomore-only teams solving real-world problems.

BME 300 – First-semester juniors have the opportunity to teach the sophomores on their teams the design process. They also serve as mentors advising the younger students on curriculum issues and this serves are peer-to-peer mentoring.

BME 301 – Second-semester juniors start a more difficult design project that could lead toward their senior capstone design course. The intent is to instill in them the confidence to complete the design process on their own.

BME 400 – First-semester seniors complete and implement a more complicated design. They perform extensive research to fully develop and test their design. They also begin to work toward filing a patent and preparing a publication.

BME 402 – Final-semester seniors test, evaluate and improve their device and produce final documentation. All students complete an outreach requirement typically by giving a talk or organizing a hands-on activity in a K-12 classroom. They also write a technical paper in a journal format and if applicable, file for a patent and/or submit their paper to a journal.

All design courses require the following deliverables as well as the final design of a physical prototype: 1. Each student keeps an engineering notebook. 2. Each team submits a weekly progress report to their advisor and client by email. 3. Each team does a mid-semester PowerPoint presentation and a written report. 4. Each team produces an end-of-semester final report. 5. Each team maintains a website. 6. Each team does an end-of-semester public poster presentation. 7. Each student does a self and peer performance evaluation. Over the last decade, the BME design students have solved a number of biomedical challenges, helping numerous companies, physicians, faculty, and patients.3,4 However BME students spend considerable time developing the necessary technical skills (such as SolidWorks, basic electronic circuits, microcontroller design, laboratory techniques, and others), as they are needed in order to solve these real-world problems. Over the years, we have provided workshops in the various skills areas so that groups of students who need to know a particular skill to complete their projects could acquire these skills in a just-in-time (JiT) learning mode. However, some seniors are still acquiring particular necessary skills even after taking five semesters of design. This learning curve sometimes hinders progress on developing these valuable designs and performing subsequent testing. These sessions have also become inadequate, as the student enrollment has grown. To effectively instruct this larger group of students, we decided that a new strategy was needed early in the curriculum.

Therefore our goal was to have a significant impact on our undergraduates’ future by

strengthening their core BME design expertise through implementing a new sophomore-level course called “Biomedical Engineering Fundamentals and Design.” This course provides students with cutting edge hands-on technical and professional design skills for solving multidisciplinary biomedical design challenges. Following this course, we expect that our students will be more productive through their remaining four semesters of real-world, client-based design. This course consists of two parts, the lecture – a blended learning experience using video lectures and in-class problem solving overviewing the design process, introduction to technical content and advising; the laboratory – hands-on modules geared toward teaching multidisciplinary BME technical and professional skills; and the guided-design group project that assimilates all the other components of the course and independent research. The project implemented was the design of a bioreactor to perform simulated stress analysis on soft tissue constructs including developing a sensor-based computer acquisition and analysis system and performing relevant finite element computer modeling and biomaterial development. This new course, described herein will not only help support our growing student body, but will directly result in a more complete and rapid succession from the design specification to the prototype as our students solve biomedical engineering problems.

BME 201 Course Implementation

In the Spring 2012 semester we held the first offering of BME 201: Biomedical Engineering Fundamentals and Design (with 74 students followed by 82 students in the second offering). This course replaced our previously required second-semester sophomore design course. The course was implemented using the expertise of two instructors and 13 biomedical engineering Student Assistants (SAs) with experience in various technical skills needed for the course. The format of the course consisted of three components, lecture, laboratory, and a design project.

A. Lecture

The 50-minute lecture each week covered professional design skills and an overview of biomedical engineering. Expert speakers (including members of the BME faculty) were invited to talk about their areas of expertise. To accompany the BME track lectures, students with co-op, industry, or research experiences in these areas were also invited to act as an expert panel alongside the faculty speakers and course instructors. The topics taught in the lecture are shown in Appendix I.

The lectures in Spring 2012 were video captured and were used in spring 2013 as supplemental lectures. The lecture time for the second offering was utilized to preface the laboratory portion of the course in a blended fashion including problem solving and traditional lectures. This model allowed the labs to cover each design skill in greater depth.

B. Lab

The two-hour labs each week developed a diversity of hands-on skills that led to the completion by each student team of a multidisciplinary, guided design project–a physical prototype of a medical device. The topics taught in the lab are shown in Appendix I. Laboratory topics were

developed through interactions with our student advisor committee (BSAC) and student surveys, as well from our external advisory board’s input. The skills that students indicated they utilized the most in past design projects and on internships and co-ops were made a priority and developed into guided exercises.

Students were required to review materials for each laboratory exercise before attending the lab period. They were provided with a laboratory manual as a required reading, consisting of a guide and future resources for each technical skill. For more advanced skills, such as SolidWorks, the students were required to review selected online materials and tutorials before the lab period. Students were tested on these materials through online quizzes before coming to lab.

C. Design Project

One of the aims of the course is to integrate the various skills acquired in the lab portion of the course into an open-ended guided design project thus combining the professional and technical design skills taught in the course. The students were divided in groups of 6-8 students, and all the student groups worked to solve the same design problem. We devised a multidisciplinary project that utilized all the skills taught in lab covering to some extent all five BME tracks: 1. Medical Instrumentation, 2. Medical Imaging, 3. Biomechanics, 4. Biomaterials/ Cellular/ Tissue Engineering, and 5. Health Care Systems. The project was to design a physical bioreactor to perform stress analysis on soft tissue using alginate samples fabricated by the students to mimic tissue. Appendix II provides an overview of the design project.

IV. BME 201 ABET Student Outcome Assessment

The Biomedical Engineering Department’s Assessment Committee directly measures student performance by annually evaluating and quantifying student work from the previous year’s design courses. A rubric based on our ABET Student Outcomes7 is used for directly measuring sophomore-, junior-, and senior-level performance.8 Thus we are able to track the performance of a graduating class through the curriculum and assess curricular changes such as in BME 201. The Design Faculty acts as the Assessment Committee each Fall semester, a committee most recently consisting of 13 members. The committee randomly selects and reviews end-of-semester design reports and peer evaluations from several design (5–9) teams at each class level from the previous year – evaluating performance indicators for each Student Outcome, and evaluating the assessment process itself. At least two faculty members review each team’s work with each reviewing at least three teams. Performance indicators are used to score each of the 12 student outcomes on a scale of 1–5 based on an established rubric for expected senior level achievement, yet all teams (regardless of level) are evaluated to this standard where seniors are said to have achieved a given student outcome with a score of four or higher. Through this process, the committee helps identify challenges and provides annual recommendations to the department’s faculty. Preliminary results after two years of assessment with the new BME 201: Biomedical Engineering Fundamentals and Design in place are shown in Figure 2, which indicate that on average, overall outcomes for the juniors with this course as background are higher than those

without. Juniors having had BME 201 were noted to have scored especially higher on outcomes related to using engineering tools, math, statistics, and those related to designing systems and solving biomedical problems. We acknowledge that Assessment Committee was aware that the most recent Junior class had the new BME 201, however, the Assessment Committee first calibrates scores by all reviewing the same senior team, and all teams (regardless of level) are scored to the same expectations. As such, the committee members are also asked to ignore the student team’s level, thus bias is minimized. The number of students who took the new offering of BME 201 in 2012 and 2013 was 74 and 82 respectively. In the Figure caption of the assessment plot, n represents the number of teams assessed at each level. We will continue to use the Assessment Committee to directly assess the impact of the new BME 201 course.

Figure 2: Assessment committee scores of ABET student outcome performance in the design curriculum following each graduating class through the curriculum and normalizing sophomore year performance. (!) Class of 2010–2013 average performance of all student outcomes having a traditional client-based design course for BME 201 (junior teams n=16 teams) (") Class of 2014 having had BME 201: Biomedical Engineering Fundamentals and Design (junior teams n=5).

V. Conclusion and Future Work

BME 201 is a required course for all sophomore students in BME. The goal of this course is to provide more direct technical design skill training and direct academic and career advising early in the curriculum. This should enhance student creativity and resourcefulness on future team-based design projects and help students to make informed decisions regarding academic and career choices. We have received positive response from the BME 201 students and from the BSAC for this course as it was offered in Spring 2012 and 2013. With the help of the SAs we have developed a course handbook for future BME 201 students, the contents of which are provided in Appendix III. We have received feedback from the BSAC and other students for course improvements. We plan to address these in the upcoming semester as described below.

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Course improvement We plan to further develop and improve upon this course as follows:

1. Increase the diversity of the blended learning experience using video lectures, in-class problem solving and advising

2. Improve and develop new hands-on laboratory modules geared toward teaching multidisciplinary BME technical and professional skills

3. Develop new guided-design multidisciplinary group projects 4. Implement an electronic lab notebook to speed content delivery, organization, and grading 5. Include new course content related to entrepreneurship and strengthen modules on

engineering ethics These five objectives will impact all the incoming sophomore students in the BME program.

We plan to implement the following five goals in the next BME 201 offering in the Spring 2014 semester. 1. Blended learning experience During BME 201 in Spring 2012 we invited speakers to give lectures related to engineering design and the different study areas in BME. The lecture topics are listed in the Homework section of Appendix I. We recorded these lectures and made them available to BME 201 students in Spring 2013 as a blended learning exercise. Consequently, we used the lecture time for more design-related instruction and problem-solving. Based on the feedback we received from the students in that semester, we intend to re-record some of the lectures and add more lectures to help provide more information on topics related to engineering design and BME. In Spring 2014, we plan to use most/all of the lecture time for problem solving. In 2013, we experimented with the Collaboratory for Enhanced Learning (WisCEL) facility in the College of Engineering library. This facility offers technology-enhanced, collaboration-friendly learning spaces for effective teaching and learning. Aspects of the blended instruction is inspired from one of the core course Bioinstrumentation taught in our department.9 We used the WisCEL facility for few of the BME 201 lectures to teach SolidWorks, LabVIEW, MATLAB and have the students work in teams on the design project. The WisCEL facility worked very well as all the students had computer access to learn these engineering tools. We plan to hold every BME 201 “lecture” (problem-solving session) in the WisCEL facility to maximize instructional value. 2. Hands-on laboratory modules The laboratory section of the course was geared towards multidisciplinary hands-on learning experiences. In order to prepare BME students with technical skills in different areas of BME we taught a variety of introductory labs as shown in the Lab section of Appendix I. To better prepare the students for these diverse technical skills we developed online prelab quizzes on Moodle for students to take before they came to the lab. This ensured that the students had an opportunity to review the material in advance.

Additionally, we have found that the two-hour time period for these labs was inadequate; and

have since increased the lab times to three hours and therefore the instructional content of all the labs. Also, based on our experiences, we plan to update specific labs as new technology becomes available (and/or less expensive), such as modifying the microcontroller lab to incorporate Arduino microcontrollers, instead of the current PIC microcontrollers. We hope this will expedite the students’ learning experiences and encourage them to start programming the microcontroller without needing a detailed understanding of the microcontroller architecture, which is currently expected from them. 3. Guided-design group project The BME 201 students work on a guided-design project that attempts to incorporate all the technical and professional skills they have learned in the course. The guided-design project process allows them to appreciate how the different areas of BME integrate with each other. In Spring 2012 and 2013, we had the students design and build a bioreactor system to test the mechanical properties of a biomaterial (alginate gel) that they synthesized. The students were required to develop a 3D model and perform finite element modeling of their bioreactor chamber in SolidWorks, and use the mill and lathe in the College of Engineering Student Shop to fabricate it. They performed stress tests on the alginate gels prepared in the tissue engineering labs and obtained the force/displacement data on computer by constructing a microcontroller-based electronic system. They further performed statistical analysis using MATLAB for the various experimental conditions and then compared the results of their testing under physiological conditions to data they obtained using the MTS machine. The students compiled a detailed report of their design process and presented it to the student lab group.

Since we have used the bioreactor design project for two consecutive years, for the Spring 2014 offering of the course, we plan to develop a different guided-design project with the similar goal of integrating different areas in BME. Ultimately, we will have three-to-four unique guided-design projects. Since our sophomores are mentored by the juniors in their first semester in the program (by combining students in BME 200 and 300 into teams), the diversity of projects will reduce the probability of content being passed down. Additionally, since we utilize juniors and seniors as student assistants, new design projects will afford them new learning opportunities. 4. Electronic Lab Notebook Implementation We developed a BME 201 course textbook/laboratory notebook, which was written by the student assistants and instructors during Spring–Fall, 2012 and made available to the students in Spring 2013. The textbook contains all the labs, instructional materials and the lab notebook for the course. The lab notebook is an essential part of this course as the students are expected to take notes on their lab exercises and the design project. The lab notebook also accounts for a part of their final grade. In Spring 2014, we plan to implement an electronic lab notebook through LabArchives. We plan to incorporate the BME 201 textbook into the electronic lab notebook, where they can take notes for their lab exercises. The electronic notebook will also be used for maintaining a record for their design projects. The instructors and the student assistants will have access to these electronic lab notebooks for grading purposes and for providing continuous

feedback to the students. Hence the students will not be required to submit any paper copy for their lab assignments.

Laboratory notebooks are an essential part of design, and with LabArchives, course content and the notebook are tied together with built-in grading tools. Together with Moodle, the online notebooks will drastically reduce grading time and thus facilitate increased enrollment and dynamic changes to course content. There is no instructional cost associated with LabArchives; students pay $5-$10 per semester for access to the course notebook (which is less expensive than the $20 print copy of the notebook required for the course). The students can also download an offline copy of their final notebook to keep as a reference. We evaluated LabArchives for possible use in all of our BME design courses in the Fall 2013 semester.10

5. Entrepreneurship and ethics Often there exists a disconnect between engineering a solution to a problem and making that design idea marketable, then translating that idea into a product. Along with the extensive toolbox of hands-on skills present in BME 201, we wish to implement an entrepreneurship module toward the end of the semester that will prepare the sophomore students to translate their ideas into marketable products in subsequent semesters. We plan to work with the Institutes for Discovery Entrepreneurship Center to develop this module. Finally, we wish to strengthen our ethics module so our students continue incorporating appropriate ethical considerations into their design early in the curriculum, as well as practicing responsible research habits.

Over the last two years we have collected course evaluations and surveys from the BME 201 students. We have also received valuable feedback from BSAC to assess BME 201. A major outcome of this course is its impact on the student’s progress in subsequent semesters of BME Design. As part of our department’s assessment process we will continue evaluating the impact of this course on senior attainment of our ABET outcomes. Final Remarks Within the course, the new content and online laboratory notebooks will significantly facilitate assessment. It will also provide a permanent searchable archive of all materials for both the student and the instructors (not achievable with paper notebooks and assignments). We have received a grant through the College of Engineering Educational Innovation initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to implement the above five goals.

We believe that BME 201 is a unique course and provides students with a broader

perspective of the different areas in BME than they have had in the past, in addition to valuable hands-on technical and professional skills. We would like to form partnerships with other departments on campus interested in developing similar courses for their curricula.

Acknowledgements: We would like to thank the entire BME design faculty, our Biomedical Engineering Student Advisory Committee and the following undergraduate students: Zachary Balsiger, Gabriel Bautista, Eamon Bernardoni, Alenna Beroza, Matthew Bollom, Isabel Callan, Robert Carson, Caleb Durante, Joelene Enge, Jack Goss, Vanessa Grosskopf, Kelly Hanneken,

Kelsie Harris, Yuan He, Jeff Hlinka, Danielle Horn, Brandon Jonen, Hallie Kreitlow, Clair Kurzynski, Bradley Lindevig, Russell Little, Amanda MacAllister, Maria Maza, Abhishek Mehrotra, Jacob Meyer, Alyssa Mitchell, Mike Nonte, Samantha Paulsen, Sarah Reichert, Olivia Rice, Andrea Schuster, Nicholas Shiley, Amy Slawson, Rebecca Stoebe, Zach Vargas, Kelsey Veserat, Don Weier, Bradley Wendorff, as well as all other BME undergraduate students who have helped and are helping with the course.

Part of the BME 201 course improvement project is being supported by the College of Engineering Educational Innovation Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from July 1, 2013 - June 30, 2014. Points of view in this document are those of the authors.

References

1. Tompkins, W.J., D. Beebe, J.A. Gimm, M. Nicosia, N. Ramanujam, P. Thompson, M.E. Tyler, and J.G. Webster. “A design backbone for the biomedical engineering curriculum,” Proc. of the 2nd Joint Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society and the Biomedical Engineering Society, 2002, pp. 2595-2596.

2. Tompkins, W.J. “Implementing design throughout the curriculum,” Proc. Annual Conference of the Biomedical Engineering Society, Chicago, 2006, pp. 35.

3. BME Design Course Project Webpages: http://bmedesign.engr.wisc.edu/ 4. BME Monitor: http://www.engr.wisc.edu/bme/newsletter/2008/article03_bme_design.html 5. Submit a Project Idea: http://bmedesign.engr.wisc.edu/ideas/ 6. Tompkins, W.J., Block, W.F., Chesler, N.C., Masters, K.S., Murphy, W.L., Tyler, M.E., and Webster, J.G.

“Development of Professional Communication Skills Throughout the BME Curriculum”, Proceedings of the American Society of Engineering Education (extended abstract). Hawaii, HI 2007.

7. Chesler, N. C.; Brace, C. L., Learning Assessment in a Design-Throughout the-Curriculum Program. In American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference, Vancouver, British Columbia, 2011; p 117.

8. BME Program Misson, Educational Objectives, and Student Outcomes. http://www.engr.wisc.edu/bme/bme-mission.html.

9. Nimunkar A.J., Zhang X. Shokoueinejad M. and Webster J. G., Promoting Active Learning in Biomedical Engineering Classes through Blended Instruction accepted for American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference, Indianapolis, 2014.

10. Puccinelli J and Nimunkar A, Experiences with Electronic Laboratory Notebooks in Real-World, Client-Based BME Design Courses, accepted for American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference, Indianapolis, 2014.

Appendix I: Syllabus for the Spring 2013 semester BME 201: Biomedical Engineering Fundamentals and Design Spring 2013

Students will learn fundamentals of biomedical engineering and design techniques. Through a combination of labs, lectures, and a guided design projects, students will have the skills and knowledge to enable them to be successful in future design courses.

Lecture

Engineering Hall 2317 Fridays, 12:05 - 12:55 PM

Lab Engineering Centers Building 2005 & 2043 Section 301: Tuesday 7:45 - 9:45 AM Section 302: Tuesday 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM Section 303: Wednesday 2:25 - 4:25 PM Section 304: Thursday 7:45 - 9:45 AM Section 305: Thursday 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM Section 306: Friday 1:20 - 3:20 PM

Course Websites

Moodle Courses https://courses.moodle.wisc.edu/prod/course/view.php?id=625 Piazza https://piazza.com/wisc/spring2013/bme201/home

Learning Objectives Students will learn the broad fundamentals of biomedical engineering and also the design process including such topics as ethical behavior, particularly with respect to human and animal subjects, intellectual property considerations, global biomedical engineering, codes and standards, and FDA regulations. The students will receive hands-on training on machining, wet-lab techniques, computer-aided modeling and simulation, basic electrical and electronics circuit design and computer programming. Lecture The 50 minute lecture each week will provide an introduction to lab topics or provide time for teams to work on their design project.

For lectures associated with lab material, please watch the mini lecture posted on Moodle Courses prior to lecture. Problems will given during these lectures to enable you to better understand the lab material prior to lab. Since the material covered in these lectures are directly related to the lab material, watching these mini lectures and participating in the problem sets will be excellent preparation for the pre-lab quizzes.

For lectures associated with the design project, teams will be given time to meet and work on their design project. Instructors will be available for consultation. Lab The two-hour labs each week develop a diversity of hands-on skills that will lead to the completion of a multidisciplinary, guided design project – a physical prototype of a medical device by each student team.

Prior to each lab, read through the notes and lab in your course handbook. Complete the associated pre-lab quiz. These pre-lab quizzes are configured to allow for multiple attempts with the highest grade stored in the grade book. However, these quizzes will not provide you with the correct answer if you get a question wrong. Pre-lab quizzes will open one week before lab and close at the start of lab.

Homework The weekly homework assignment consists of watching lecture videos from a previous offering of the course. These videos are linked from the Moodle Courses homepage. A short reflection on the video is due at noon the following Monday. Required Materials The required BME 201 Course Handbook will be sold by the UW Chapter of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) during the first lecture for $20.00. There are no other required textbooks. Videos, slides, and written materials will be provided on Moodle Courses.

Printing access (such as through your CAE account) will also be needed for some supplemental materials to your handbook such as Lab 2 and notes about the design project.

Course Handbook The BME 201 Course Handbook contains notes about design project topics, the lab materials, and starting space for your design notebook. The handbook contains a few blank pages for the design project, but it will not be sufficient. Rather than making you purchase blank pages you might not use, a blank PDF of the notebook page will be posted on Moodle Courses. Print this document as needed and add it to the end of your notebook.

Since this handbook is considered an engineering notebook, follow proper documentation procedures. Always write your entries in pen and don’t allow anyone else to write in your notebook. More detailed notes regarding notebooks can be found starting on page 5 of the course handbook. This will also be discussed during the first lab period.

At the end of the semester, your handbook will be submitted for grading. It will be returned to you for future reference.

Piazza

This semester, we will be using Piazza for class discussion and distributing class-related information. The system is highly catered to getting you help fast and efficiently from classmates, the SAs, and instructors. Rather than emailing questions to the teaching staff, please post your questions on Piazza.

Teaching Staff This course is taught with the assistance of undergraduate student assistants (SAs). The SAs have

been selected because of their knowledge and experience and are available to help you during lab and with your design project. If you have questions during the semester, please talk to an SA during lab or post a question on Piazza.

If you are interested in serving as an SA for a future offering of the course, please apply during the fall semester.

Grading Policy Lecture attendance 10% Laboratory notebook (course handbook) 60% Laboratory experiments and quizzes 15% Design Project 15%

Tentative Grading Scale A: 93% and above AB: 88% – 92% B: 80% – 87% BC: 70% – 79% C: 60% – 69% D: 50% – 59% F: below 50%

Tentative Course Schedule Date Lab Lecture Design Project Homework

Jan 22 Introduction to Lab & Shop Quizzes

Introduction to BME 201 & Electronics Part I Pick teams “Principle and Practice of Design”

Jan 27 Electronics Part I Electronics Part II Literature review

“Introduction to the PDS, FDA, and Standards & Codes”

Feb 3 Electronics Part II LabVIEW Part I* “Introduction to Healthcare Systems Track”

Feb 10 LabVIEW Part I LabVIEW Part II* PDS “Introduction to Biomechanics”

Feb 17 LabVIEW Part II Microcontrollers Part I Electronics, LabVIEW, & Microcontrollers

“Introduction to Biomaterials & Tissue Engineering”

Feb 24 Microcontrollers Part I Microcontrollers Part II “Introduction to Medical Instrumentation”

Mar 3 Microcontrollers Part II BME Class/Career Advising Day♭

SolidWorks “Introduction to Biomedical Imaging”

Mar 10 3D Modeling and Stress Analysis I

3D Modeling and Stress Analysis*

“Impact of Engineering Solutions in a Global and Societal Context”

Mar 17 3D Modeling and Stress Analysis II Design Project* Fabrication “Ethical Problem Solving”

Mar 24 Spring Break

Mar 31 Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering

Tong Distinguished Entrepreneur Lecture♭ Fabrication “Human Subjects in Research & Institutional Review

Boards”

Apr 7 Cell Culture and Hydrogels MATLAB I* Testing & Analysis

Apr 14 Design Project MATLAB II*

Apr 21 Design Project Design Project Presentation & Paper

Human and Animal Subjects Certification

Apr 28 Design Project Attend Design Presentations

May 5 Design Project Presentations No lecture Design Project deliverables due May 10, 2013 at 5:00PM

* Lecture will be held in Wendt 410 (4th floor), ♭Lecture will be held in 1610 Engineering Hall

Appendix II: BME 201 Design Project BME 201 Design Project Overview Design and fabricate a simple bioreactor to measure the mechanical properties (ultimate strength and Young’s modulus) of a common biomaterial known as alginate. Overview Tissue engineering is a rapidly expanding field, which results in the creation of novel biomaterials from year to year. It is important to meticulously study every property of these biomaterials to explain in detail how they interact, function, and support portions of the body. Some of the main biomaterial properties to determine are the mechanical properties; for example if cells are encapsulated in an alginate gel, how much mechanical stress in the body could it endure before rupturing and exposing its contents? These types of questions can be answered by replicating the in-vivo environment with a simple bioreactor and applying a known force until the alginate sample ruptures. Biomedical engineers need to be equipped with the knowledge of basic electronics, programming, and fabrication in order to perform experiments and answer such questions related to biomaterials testing. Simple bioreactors in combination with force sensors can be applied to many fields such as measuring the structural stiffness of bone samples or the tensile strength of tendons. General Specifications -- Height of the alginate sample to be tested in the bioreactor is 10 mm. -- Diameter of the alginate sample to be tested in the bioreactor is 15.6 mm. -- Alginate sample needs to be completely immersed in the Phosphate Buffer Saline (PBS). -- Outer diameter of the bioreactor has to be less than 3.8 cm (1.5 inch). -- The bioreactor needs to have to two holes, one for input and one for output in order to allow

PBS to flow through the simple bioreactor. Diameter of the holes will be provided later. -- The max force to be measured is 0.907 kg (2 lbs). -- Material of choice for the bioreactor is polycarbonate. -- Force and displacement will be measured. -- Force will be measured using a force-sensing resistor. Displacement will be measured with a

digital calipers with RS232 output. Both sensors will be provided to you, but system implementation and programming will be your responsibility.

-- The force and displacement data needs to be acquired on the computer using a microcontroller.

Appendix III: BME 201 Course Handbook

Contents

Forward ................................................................................................................................................ i Biomedical Engineering ..................................................................................................................... iii Design Topics ..................................................................................................................................... 1

Design Topic Video Links ............................................................................................................ 3 Design Notebooks ......................................................................................................................... 5 Steps in the Design Process .......................................................................................................... 9 Product Design Specifications (PDS) ......................................................................................... 11 Progress Reports ......................................................................................................................... 13 Written Reports ........................................................................................................................... 17

Lab .................................................................................................................................................... 21 Lab 1: Basic Electronics and Electrical Measurements .............................................................. 23 Lab 2: LabVIEW ......................................................................................................................... 43 Lab 3: Microcontrollers .............................................................................................................. 59 Lab 4: 3D Modeling and Stress Analysis I ............................................................................... 129 Lab 5: 3D Modeling and Stress Analysis II .............................................................................. 155 Lab 6: Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering ............................................................................ 165 Lab 7: Cell Culture and Hydrogels ........................................................................................... 183 Lab 8: MATLAB ...................................................................................................................... 197

Design Project ................................................................................................................................. 209

Paper ID #9589

An Experience with Electronic Laboratory Notebooks in Real-World, Client-Based BME Design Courses

Dr. John P Puccinelli, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Dr. Puccinelli is an Associate Faculty Associate in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. He beganhere as student near the start of the UW-BME program and earned his BS, MS, and PhD in BME. Heis interested in hands-on instruction – teaching and developing courses related to biomaterials and tissueengineering, as well as design. He was awarded the BMES Student Chapter Teaching Award in 2011 and2013 and the Polygon Outstanding BME Instructor Award in 2012.

Dr. Amit Janardhan Nimunkar, University of Wisconsin Madison


An Experience with Electronic Laboratory Notebooks in Real-

World, Client-Based BME Design Courses

Abstract

We implemented LabArchives Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN) in three levels of

Biomedical Engineering (BME) Design (sophomore – senior) at the University of Wisconsin-

Madison. Paper notebooks allow users to quickly take notes, make design sketches, and show

mathematical calculations within them, however they are limited in their ability to incorporate

the vastly growing types of various digital media being employed in engineering design.

Additionally, only one copy of a paper notebook exists as compared to the ability to share an

ELN (or part of one) with the involved parties. Here we outline the processes used to implement

the ELN and initial student and faculty survey results comparing paper notebooks to an ELN.

Introduction

Our Biomedical Engineering (BME) undergraduate students participate in real-world, client-

based design projects throughout the curriculum in teams of four or five students.1 The design

curriculum is advised by up to 13 faculty members per semester, each overseeing up to four

teams. In these courses, from sophomore through senior year, the students not only gain real-

world design experience, but also learn and practice professional engineering design skills

including maintaining a laboratory or design notebook. The design notebook protects the

student’s intellectual property and is therefore essential to our campus patenting agency for both

applying for and defending patents. The notebook also details the research and the procedures for

use by the project’s client while subsequently implementing or continuing a design; it also serves

as a tool for faculty to assess individual students and to establish their contributions to their team.

Proper use of the laboratory notebook builds the life-long learning skills necessary for a student

to become a successful design engineer or a researcher.

Traditionally, the department provided students with physical design notebooks, which

facilitated uniformity, met the standards for design work, and were convenient for the students to

carry and quickly present design ideas and to take notes. Unfortunately, the students were all too

often more concerned about the course notebook grade than its true purpose. Thus, many did not

complete their notebook in real-time, but rather kept notes and sketches separately and then

copied them neatly into the notebook just before the due dates. Additionally, during these

grading times, the students would be without their notebooks while the faculty reviewed them,

thus hindering their ability to keep them up-to-date. They were also unable to ‘share’ common

notebook entries easily, such as group meeting notes. Similarly, only one set of team notebooks

existed and therefore typically either the client, the student, or our patent agency held the single

set. Finally, as the number of undergraduates in the department has grown and continues to grow,

the cost and management of the many physical notebooks has become onerous. In this

digital/online age, our BME Student Advisory Committee (BSAC) expressed interest in using

laptops/tablets as design notebook portals, as many of the students were already creating digital

content by typing their notes, using CAD software to generate design sketches, or writing

software code as part of their design solution (which is marginally useful when printed into a

paper notebook).

As a result, in fall 2013, we experimented for the first time with LabArchives Electronic

Laboratory Notebooks (ELN) in all three of our design courses (sophomore, junior, and senior)

which consisted of approximately 200 students in total. While there have been various ELNs

developed for research laboratories, few are priced for student use or geared toward classroom

instruction while appropriate for the multidisciplinary BME design projects (some include:

chemistry, biology, mathematics, code, etc.). ELNs in general provide automatic time stamping

(to protect intellectual property), revision history, a rapid method of entering data, content

organization in a neat and easy-to-read fashion, compatibility with an abundance of file types,

and content sharing across notebooks. LabArchives has built-in instructor features that allow

design advisors to view their students’ notebooks, activity feed, and to generate a pdf copy of the

notebook. Smartphone apps are also available that provide for uploading photos seamlessly and

for making voice and real-time entries. Here we will present, from both student and faculty

perspectives, the trials and tribulations of switching to ELNs for all of our design courses. We

will summarize student feedback and provide preliminary assessment data.

Methods

Choosing an ELN platform

In choosing an ELN from the plethora of available options (nearly 100 unique options

referenced),2, 3 two main logistical criteria were considered for our particular unique six-

semesters of design courses. First, the design course instructors needed the ability to view and

grade their own design team’s notebooks. Ideally, each instructor would only see their teams and

the ELN would group the teams for the instructor. Thus the grading process would not be

onerous for the instructors. Second, the ELN should not be cost prohibitive as many of the ELNs

cost near $100 per licensed user. Current paper notebooks provided by the department cost $15

per notebook and this was set as the budget. Notebook functionality was then considered

including the ability to easily import various content (CAD drawings, Microsoft Suite

integration, images, and others.), name and time-stamping of entries (for IP protection), and

sharing of entries.

Our institution also hosted ELN vendor seminars. LabArchives-Electronic Laboratory Notebook4

classroom edition emerged as a solution that would meet all of our needs at this time. Most other

options lacked instructional management of ‘students’ within a course. Some could offer a

similar structure through lab-like organization (i.e. Lab PI and graduate students, etc.), however

managing student teams and multiple instructors would have been complicated. Also, more

general online note taking programs such as EverNote, Microsoft OneNote, or even Google

Docs/Drive were considered, in addition to lacking course management features these lacked the

official nature of notebooks in their ability to protect intellectual property (time stamping,

identification of the content creators, revision history and/or signed/locked entries). After

choosing LabArchives for Design other vendor ELNs were also evaluated by our institution as

part of pilot project, however under a confidentiality agreement we are not permitted to disclose

any information from this process, therefore this paper focuses on our experience with

LabArchives in BME Design. LabArchives will also be employed in our spring sophomore

design fundamentals course where students used it as both a design notebook and laboratory

instruction manual.5

ELN implementation

Using the notebook grading sheet, a notebook file/folder structure “Master course notebook” was

created before the semester. This included folders for project information (subpages: contact

information and project description), meeting notes (subfolders: team, client and advisor

meetings), research notes (subfolders: biology/physiology and competing designs) design ideas,

testing and results (subfolders: materials/expenses, protocols, and experimentation), and

references. A sample entry was also provided which included bolded headings for title, date,

those present, goals, notes, and conclusions/action items. Students are able to create new folders

or modify existing folders. Additionally, if changes or additions were made to the master course

notebook, the instructor could ‘push’ this change to all student notebooks or use this feature to

selectively release content to the students.

Our design students in all classes (sophomore-senior, BME 200,300, 400) meet together on the

first day of class to choose their design projects using a student created web-based application.

As a result, project teams and associated instructors are not finalized until the end of this class-

period. Thus, despite the LabArchives software allowing for easy class and section import, this

could not be accomplished with our course structure. To avoid any delay in the students

accessing their notebooks, all course rosters (200 students) were imported and the students were

given instructions to create their accounts before this first class day. At the start of class, a brief

15 min tutorial was provided by the design instructors. This included the importance of

notebooks, context and history of paper notebooks, the folder and file structure of LabArchives,

the sample format, how to create various entry types (rich text, attachments, Microsoft Suite

documents, and importing references from PubMed), sharing entries, linking between entries, the

iOS and Android apps, and an overview of the help documents. Once all of the projects were

selected, the project, the student, and the instructor list were exported from our software and

LabArchives sorted the students into the proper ‘sections’ with one section for each design

project and each instructor being assigned their sections or projects. Instructors could then login

and see each of their design teams (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Screenshot of LabArchives “Course Manager” showing the course notebook folder

structure on the left and the course manager features on the right including the students assigned

to team ‘7-Sleep Apnea’ as an example (student names were greyed-out). For each student, it

also displays their activity (number of entries), their latest action and provides links to view a

complete chronological activity feed, the entire notebook, or comments.

As with paper notebooks, instructors provided grades to their students at mid-semester and end

of the semester. LabArchives allows the students or the instructors to generate a pdf copy of the

notebook that can be easily scrolled through for this purpose. Instructors could also just view the

online notebooks. Unlike paper notebooks, instructors could view the notebooks at any time

(such as before design meetings) to provide constant feedback and gain insight into the project

progress. Unlike paper notebooks, students were never without their notebook during grading.

Assessment of the ELN

Throughout the semester, BSAC provided feedback to the design faculty on the ELNs. Desired

features that were lacking or any concerns were directly communicated to the LabArchives

development team and these features were implemented or addressed quickly. An example

feature that was missing in LabArchives and requested by the students was the ‘autosave’ feature.

The LabArchives development team implemented this feature into the ELN on request. At the

end of the semester both the students and the faculty were surveyed. All surveys were

anonymous and consent to use the anonymous data was obtained for IRB approval. Since the

majority of the students used paper notebooks either in their freshman design course, pervious

BME design course(s), and/or during their employment (i.e. internship or co-op) they could

make a direct comparison. They were asked to rate a number of criteria, on a scale of 1-3 (where

1 is poorly, 2 is moderately, and 3 is very), related to logistics and the engineering outcomes

used to grade the notebooks for both paper and electronic notebooks. Environment plots were

generated to show the relationship between the two formats. For students who had never used a

paper notebook, they rated only the electronic notebooks and this data was analyzed separately.

Results and Discussion

Implementation

The process to set-up the semester (Master course notebook, student design team import,

associating instructors, and preparing the in-class demo) was a simple process lasting for about

an hour. The post-course ELN survey was taken by 92% of the BME design students (170

students) and 98% of them had never used an ELN before this course while 91% had previous

experience with paper design or laboratory notebooks. Even though such a large number had

never been exposed to an ELN, 59% of the students only needed the 15 min in-class demo to feel

comfortable using it. An additional 36% spent less than four additional hours learning how to use

it by helping each other and utilizing the LabArchives online help documents and videos. Only

6% found it somewhat difficult or difficult to use with 41% finding it easy to very easy to use and

34% found it somewhat easy to use. Unfortunately, 10% noted some type of technical difficulty

(typically as a result of losing internet connectivity causing loss of data). This particular issue

was raised in a BSAC meeting and an ‘autosave’ feature was requested through LabArchives that

is now available. The students felt that overall the ELN was simple to learn and easy to use.

Assessment

Environmental plots were used to compare the ELN (y-axis) to the paper notebooks (x-axis).

Points along the 45° meridian line represent areas where each notebook are equal in comparison.

Scores in the upper right quadrant are areas where both the ELN and paper notebooks are

moderately to very proficient. The upper left quadrant contains areas where the ELN is superior

and the lower right quadrant are areas where the paper notebooks were superior.

Logistical considerations of using either a paper notebook or ELN were scored in the survey by

the students and the faculty (Figure 2). The ELN outscored the paper notebook by the students

and faculty in areas such as being accountable to keep it up-to-date, the ability to maintain

neatness, organization, draft revisions, share content and link to and include outside materials.

Sharing, organization, and linking were the areas cited as the most beneficial features of the

ELN. In fact, 82% of the students shared their notebooks (half of which shared the entire

notebook) with their teammates. The faculty felt that students could format the ELN better than

the paper notebooks, however while the students thought highly of the ELN formatting, they also

felt they could decently format their paper notebooks. The students also commented frequently

that they appreciated the ELN due to their poor handwriting and the available spell check feature.

1 Maintain contact information

2 Format notebook entries

3 Take meeting notes

4 Take research notes

5 Keep the notebook up-to-date

6 Be accountable to it keep up-to-date

7 Maintain neatness

8 Maintain organization

9 Manage draft revisions

10 Make design sketches

11 Insert images

12 Annotate content

13 Review the notebook

14 Ability to find information from previous

entries

15 Share content

16 Link to and include other materials in the

notebook (citations, data, webpages, etc.)

Figure 2: Logistical considerations of using the notebooks: survey results for students rating

their experience (♦) and faculty rating how well the students did (●) on a scale of 1-3 (1: poor, 2:

moderately, 3: very). Each data point is also identified with labels corresponding to the list on the

right, with the faculty data points including an ‘F’ for faculty i.e. 1F. Scores in the upper left

quadrant indicate that the ELN is far superior (single dashed circle) in a number of categories.

Whereas scores in the lower right quadrant indicate that the ELN is inferior (double dashed oval)

which included only category #10 the ability to make design sketches. Scores were consistent

between students and faculty in most categories.

The only point where the ELN lagged behind the paper notebook was in the area of making

design sketches. The sketching program provided in LabArchives is extremely rudimentary and

not useful. Most students would make design drawings in SolidWorks or other drawing/CAD

programs and include those as images or sketch by hand and then use one of the apps with their

mobile device to upload a photo of their sketch. Inclusion of a more robust drawing program

within the ELN would be a benefit, however most students indicated they would still use one of

these aforementioned methods. Additionally students commented that they felt rude using their

laptops during meetings with their clients or other professionals and preferred paper notebook in

these situations. Many then transposed these paper notes into the ELN. Also a few commented

that their laptops were heavy to carry around or had poor battery life resulting in them using

paper and transposing into the ELN later.

(a) Utilize mathematics

(b.1) Design experiments (experimental plan)

(b.2) Conduct experiments (carry out the

experimental plan)

(b.3) Analyze & interpret data from experiments

(c) Design a system, component, or process to

meet desired needs

(e) Solve biomedical engineering problems

(d) Function on multidisciplinary team

(f) Ethical responsibility: Cite regulations and

standards and credit work

(g) Communicate effectively: written and

graphic modes

(h) Show the a global, economic, environmental,

and societal impact

(i) Engage in life-long learning including

keeping and organizing references

(j) Show how the design solves a contemporary

issue

(k) Incorporate engineering tools (code, CAD…)

(l) Show you understand biology and

physiology as related to the problem

Figure 3: Engineering student outcomes using the notebooks: survey results for students rating

their experience (♦) and faculty rating how well the students did (●) on a scale of 1-3 (1: poor, 2:

moderately, 3: very). Each data point is also identified with labels corresponding to the list on the

right, with the faculty data points including an ‘F’ for faculty i.e. 1F. Scores in the upper left

quadrant indicate that the ELN is far superior (single dashed circle) whereas scores in the lower

right quadrant indicate that the ELN is inferior (double dashed oval) for only outcome (a) the

ability to utilize mathematics. Scores were relatively consistent between students and faculty.

In the design course, the faculty score the students on most deliverables (including the

notebooks) using our ABET outcomes (a– l). Similar to the logistical considerations we surveyed

the students and faculty on the student’s performance in the notebook on these outcomes

(Figure 3). Most outcomes scored well and similarly between the paper notebook and the ELN.

The ELN scored higher on the ability to cite regulations and standards, credit work, keep and

organize references, and incorporating engineering tools such as CAD and software code.

Students commented that they appreciated being able to import references from PubMed, have

functional links to resources, and being able to directly insert media (verses taping printed

copies). However, like the ability to make design sketches the ability to utilize mathematics

scored low for the ELN. This again is likely due to the rudimentary equation editor available in

LabArchives. Many students again used paper and then captured a photo of their mathematical

calculations and inserted into the ELN. Integrating the ELN with MATLAB, Mathematica,

Maple, or other similar math program would be a significant benefit.

For students who had never used a paper notebook before, the average score for ELNs in most

logistic categories and outcomes decreased, however, all criteria still remained in the same

quadrants (date not shown). The ability to make design sketches and utilize mathematics was still

a concern for the ELN. Overall the most requested features missing were a better sketching tool,

integration with a math program and citation manager, and improved image integration and

annotation tools.

The students felt that on average the number of entries were higher and the quality of entries

were superior in the ELN. Interestingly, faculty felt the ELN would help prevent procrastination

in that students would make more entries in real-time directly in the notebook verses entering

data later (especially right before the deadlines). However, a similar number of students felt they

made more real-time entries in paper and in the ELN and many felt it was the same for both. This

is contrary to their belief that they felt more accountable to keep the ELN up-to-date. In the end,

76% of the students (and 100% of faculty) want to continue to use LabArchives and only 13% of

students want to use paper again.

Finally, from the instructor’s point-of-view (Figure 4), it was easier to view the students’

notebooks with the ELN (not having illegible notebooks due penmanship was also cited as a

benefit). The ELN also outscored the paper notebooks in the ability to perform notebook checks

outside of class meetings, finding information within the notebooks and grading them.

1 View your student's notebooks

2 Perform notebook checks

3 Find information in the notebooks

4 Compare student's notebooks

5 Grade the notebooks

6 Provide notebook feedback

Figure 4: Instructors rated paper and electronic

notebooks on six instructional capabilities. In all, the

ELN rated higher than the paper notebooks. The ELN

rated especially higher in four (as indicated by the

dashed circle).

Conclusion

The use of LabArchives in Biomedical Engineering Design courses (sophomore-senior) proved

to be valuable experience. Both the student and faculty responses were overwhelmingly positive

from a logistical, engineering, and instructional perspective. The ability for the students, the

client, and the instructors to view the notebooks at any time and to all be able to keep the

‘notebook’ indefinitely is an additional major benefit. Two main concerns surfaced and were

consistent between student who had and had never used paper notebooks before; using an ELN

hindered the ability to directly make design sketches and utilize mathematics within the

notebook. We will continue utilizing LabArchives in the spring design courses. We are also

going to evaluate outcome achievement by comparing notebook evaluation form scores from

past years to this year. Finally, we are also going to employ LabArchives in our new BME 201:

Biomedical Engineering Fundamentals and Design sophomore level guided design course5 as the

course manual, repository for assignments, and design notebook.

Acknowledgements

The design faculty would like to thank all of BME design students for utilizing the ELN Fall

2013 and especially those who completed the survey. We thank BSAC for suggesting the use of

an ELN and performing the initial ELN research. We would also like to thank Caleb Durante,

Alex LaVanway, Peter Guerin, and Sarvesh Periyasamy for demoing LabArchives in the

summer.

References

1. Tompkins, W. J. In Imlementing Design Throughout the Curriculum, BMES, Chicago, Illinois, Oct. 11-16;

Chicago, Illinois, 2006.

2. Atrium Research - Electronic Laboratory Notebooks. http://www.atriumresearch.com/html/eln.htm.

3. Rubacha, M.; Rattan, A. K.; Hosselet, S. C., A Review of Electronic Laboratory Notebooks Available in the

Market Today. JALA 2011, 16 (1), 90-98.

4. LabArchives - Electronic Laboratory Notebook. http://www.labarchives.com/.

5. Nimunkar, A. J.; Puccinelli, J. P.; Bollom, M.S., Tompkins, W. J., Using a Guided Design Project to Motivate

BME Sophomore Students to Learn Multidisciplinary Engineering Skills. In American Society for

Engineering Education Annual Conference, Indianapolis, IN, 2014.

http://www.atriumresearch.com/html/eln.htm

http://www.labarchives.com/

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