Empowering biomedical engineering undergraduates to help teach design

We report on our experience empowering upperclassmen and seniors to help teach design courses in biomedical engineering. Initiated in the fall of 1998, these courses are a projects-based set, where teams of students from freshmen level to senior level converge to solve practical problems in biomedical engineering. One goal in these courses is to teach the design process by providing experiences that mimic it. Student teams solve practical projects solicited from faculty, industry and the local community. To hone skills and have a metric for grading, written documentation, posters and oral presentations are required over the two-semester sequence. By requiring a mock design and build exercise in the fall, students appreciate the manufacturing process, the difficulties unforeseen in the design stage and the importance of testing. A Web-based, searchable design repository captures reporting information from each project since its inception. This serves as a resource for future projects, in addition to traditional ones such as library, outside experts and lab facilities. Based on results to date, we conclude that characteristics about our design program help students experience design and learn aspects about teamwork and mentoring useful in their profession or graduate education.