Faculty ProjectsProblem-Based Learning Practicum for BME Quantitative Physiology Course
Project Manager
David O'Neill, Associate Professor of Instruction, Biomedical Engineering; Michael Jaharis Director of Experiential Learning
Amount Requested
$5,520
Summary
The 300-level quantitative physiology course sequence is central to the undergraduate curriculum for Biomedical Engineering, providing students with essential physiological content upon which advanced elective courses are based. However, as other core class have been updated in recent years, and as the overall field of biomedical engineering has shifted, this sequence has not remained fully integrated with the traditional engineering content of our degree. Furthermore, there is an ongoing initiative to incorporate course-content and assignments that fostering problem-solving skills determined to be critical for our graduates entering the workforce. A recent curriculum reorganization means that our students now take their main experimentation course as sophomores rather than rising seniors. Resultantly, juniors taking the physiology course sequence are now equipped to undertake experimental practica with knowledge of design of experiments and experience in obtaining high-quality experimental data. Thus, this Murphy award will support the development of new human physiology lab experiences that leverage these recent curricular changes, provide experiential learning opportunities, and the growth of our students’ problem-solving skills. The first experiential physiology lab-based problem-solving challenge will be built around using indirect calorimetry (making measurements on expired gas to determine metabolic rate). In small teams, students will be tasked with calculating the quantity of food required for an individual undertaking spaceflight to the moon and back. This lab-challenge will be integrated into the newly redesigned BME 305 taught by Prof. Casey Ankeny. Class-time has already been re-allocated to increasingly shift the educational focus of BME 305 away from knowledge recall and towards in-class problem-based learning. The addition of hands-on lab experiences will naturally synergize with the refreshed course’s focus and add meaningful opportunities for diverse learners for whom the benefits of experiential learning should not be underestimated.
Planned Activities/Investments
Commercial equipment setups are expensive (>$15k). Because of the class size (~60 undergraduates), even with students working in teams and signing up for scheduled timeslots the department would require 5–6 setups. The primary activity is to design, build, and test, a bespoke indirect calorimetry experimental setup that:
- Provides sufficiently accurate data that can be analyzed to determine metabolic rate
- Is substantially cheaper than commercial alternatives (target cost of $3–4000 per setup).
Further, to analyze data obtained from the experimental setup, data processing and analysis code must be developed. This project will produce both fully-functioning code and incomplete ‘skeleton-code’ that will be completed by students as part of the lab activities. Educational materials will be developed in the form of lab instructions, lab preparatory work (establishing the problem), code-skeletons (incomplete code) that students will complete as part of the lab activities, and equipment demonstration videos. Both the experimental setup and the educational materials will need to be tested with naïve users (i.e. not students working on the project). Additional BME seniors (who have taken the physiology sequence but not undertaken this problem-based lab experience) will be recruited to try out the lab. This debugging stage will be critical for successful deployment of the lab experience into the course. Testing with naïve students is the only way to reliably unearth misinterpretations of instructions, ambiguous directions, and to calibrate the optimal balance between open-ended learning opportunities and realistic time constraints. Assessment of the new lab experience (see next section) will be suitable for dissemination at Engineering Education conferences and in the Journal of Biomedical Engineering Education.
Impact
Students taking the BME quantitative physiology sequence are primarily BME undergraduate juniors. To maximize curricular impact, the lab experiences will explicitly draw upon pre-requisite course skills and knowledge from BME207 Introduction to Biomedical Experimentation, BME270 Fluid Mechanics, and CS150 Fundamentals of Programming, all typically taken by sophomores. By focusing on human subject data collection, the proposed lab experiences will synergize with lab projects that already exist in junior-year courses BME 308 Biomedical Signals and Circuits and BME 309 Biomedical Systems Analysis, the latter of which I co-teach. Unlike these 308/309-projects which focus on building and testing instrumentation, the proposed lab experiences will focus on human data collection and problem-solving. Combined, these lab experiences will be synergistic rather than redundant. To assess the impact (and for practical logistic reasons), the labs will be rolled-out as an optional component for additional course credit. No new theory will be delivered as part of the labs and so assessment of the education impact can be achieved through comparing how students elect to take the lab perform on final exams with students that elect not to undertake the lab experience. Exam performance on physiology topics not related to the lab enables robust assessment calibration.
Sustainability
This project will generate new labs that will have low recurring costs. Any recurring costs such as lab consumables (e.g. calibration gas canisters, disposable breathing filters) can be born by the BME department’s budget for lab courses.
Deliverables
- New fully-equipped experimental setups for obtaining measurements of metabolic rate through the method of indirect calorimetry.
- Educational materials for a new hands-on experiential lab experience for BME undergraduates embedded in the cornerstone quantitative physiology course sequence.
- A model for additional problem-based learning lab experiences that can be adapted for deployment in other courses.
- Engineering education research findings suitable for dissemination at the American Society for Engineering Education, and in the Journal of Biomedical Engineering Education
Previous Projects
N/A. This is a new proposal.
Budget Overview
The BME department has some donor funds that are dedicated for purchasing educational lab equipment. These gift funds do not extend to compensating student volunteers for their time or paying undergraduate workers.
Accordingly, Murphy award funds will be used to:
- $5,040: Employ a small team of undergraduate students to develop, test, and build indirect calorimetry experimental setups under the guidance of Prof. O’Neill.
- Estimated costs: 3 students, 120hrs, $14/hr.
- $480: Compensate BME seniors (who have taken the quantitative physiology courses) to test the labs. Having testers that understand the physiology theory, but are naïve to the experimentation will be critical in ensuring the lab is appropriately balanced in terms of achievability and being sufficiently open-ended to provide an educationally-valuable problem-solving experience.
- Estimated costs: 8 students (4 pairs), 4 hours each of lab prep and experimentation.
Total: $5,520
Matching Funds
Departmental matching of funds has been approved by BME Chair Matt Tresch