Bioengineering Curriculum Development at UIUC:
Engaging Non-Science Majors and Future Teachers

Funded by The Whitaker Foundation
Special Opportunity Awards in Biomedical Engineering


Richard L. Magin, Professor and Head
Bioengineering Department (MC 063)
University of Illinois at Chicago
851 South Morgan Street, Room 212
Chicago, Illinois 60607-7052

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Presentations

Publications

Course Development

Bioengineering in Biology and Medicine: Focus on Medical Imaging

Principles and Practices in Science Education

Related Projects

Illinois Chickscope

Biology Workbench Investigation Portal

The goal of this project is to expand the educational opportunities in bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) through the development of new bioengineering courses for non-science majors and future teachers. One course is directed toward future science teachers and a second is designed for UIUC undergraduates who must complete a general education course in the natural sciences or technology. We believe that the study of bioengineering can help these students, and, in the case of the science teachers, their future students, deal more effectively with the technical and biomedical issues confronting our society.

A significant effort has been devoted to build strong and productive connections between the Bioengineering faculty and faculty in other disciplines. We have used three methods to establish these connections:

  1. network computer links (email, web, conferencign systems),
  2. working groups (bioengineers/science educators, science teachers/ education students, college students/elementary school students), and
  3. new curriculum materials (future science teachers, non-science majors).

These connections support the immediate goals of course development, but also provide a basis for extensions of bioengineering into the university curriculum. As natural as these connections may seem, they are not always easy to establish and maintain across the university's traditional departmental boundaries.

One of the key challenges for this project has been to bring the complexity of bioengineering to students who are focusing on less technical areas of study, such as humanities, fine arts, social sciences, and education. For many of these students, the worlds of science and technology seem distant and even unfriendly. The elegance of mathematics and the excitement of new technologies may serve as barriers, rather than as opportunities to learn. We believe that bioengineering provides an avenue for attracting these students. But selecting among the many possible technologies and applications is no easy task. Moreover, it is critical to find ways of structuring courses so that students are drawn into serious and sustained inquiry, rather than the superficial study sometimes seen in "physics for poets" courses.

General Education Bioengineering Course

In Spring 1995 our new course, Bioengineering in Biology and Medicine: Focus on Medical Imaging, was taught under two rubrics, Bioengineering 199 BE and Curriculum & Instruction 199 BE. This course also qualified as a Freshman Discovery Course, as part of an initiative in which faculty are encouraged to offer small group (no more than 20) courses to freshman. The course attracted 15 students, including both bioengineering oriented students and non-majors. A complete curriculum was presented, including the coverage of four basic imaging modalities:


Students completed computer based imaging exercises, went on field trips to see each of these modalities first hand, completed homework, exams and term papers, and gave oral presentations prepared in teams. Office hours were extended using computer conferencing. A working group, including both engineering and education students, and a "graduate" of the first year course offering, has continued efforts to improve the curriculum and make it more accessible to students.

Satisfaction with the course appeared to be high. The course was ranked highly in the standard survey done at the end of the term, rating in the top 20% of courses. One student brought her mother to the oral presentations and took group pictures. Informal exit interviews indicated the following likely majors for the students: pre-med (3), biological sciences (non-medical) (1), electrical engineering (1), pre-law (1), music (1), and business (1). The instructor's informal observation was that intended major had little effect on student performance, nor on the background which the students brought to class. Instead, attitude and aptitude appeared to be the sole determinants of the performance in the class during the semester. In fact, the music major was the strongest of the students.

Science Education and Bioengineering Course

The Fall 1995/Spring 1996 course is Curriculum & Instruction 340 BE (also Bioen 370 BE): Principles and Practices in Science Education. The course was approved for students in the elementary education program of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. The students are future elementary and middle-school teachers, who teach all science topics. Students showed great interest for this interdisciplinary approach. The course makes extensive use of new communication technologies, including electronic mail discussion groups, confencing software, and the web. In addition the students found new CD-ROM-based simulations and environments to be very helpful, both in learning about the human body and its relation to the environment, and for exploring the possible use of these technologies in their own future classrooms. Students work in small "inquiry groups" to explore questions of their own choosing. Several of these centered around the senses.

The group topics included:

  1. color and vision, including exploration using the World Wide Web to locate curricular materials for future teaching,
  2. how form of the body influences function and performance, looking at issues of athletics, disabilities, strength, and body stereotypes, such as those related to body fat or skin color,
  3. how our senses define for us the environment we live in as well as how the environment shapes what we can sense; using the Discoveries CD-ROMs to explore environment topics; hands-on experiments on hearing, vision, touch, taste, and smell,
  4. how sounds are transmitted, and how the ear is able to register and interpret sounds; activities include "messing about" with objects such as tuning forks, taut strings, water, and different kinds of metals; experimenting with tin can telephones; studying vibrations produced on rubber sheets at the end of tubes; learning the parts of the ear; recording sounds heard indoors and outdoors,
  5. the relative qualities of sensory interpretation (e.g., visual memory, color interpretation, taste and smell distortions),
  6. disease and how it affects the human body; using microscopes as a tool for exploring different aspects of the body, and
  7. how aging affects the senses and how aging affects our skeletal structure.


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