Using the World Wide Web to teach biological engineering

Abstract

Two courses, BAE235: Engineering Biology (http://www.bae.ncsu.edu/bae/courses/bae235/) and BAE465: Biomedical Engineering Applications (http://www.bae.ncsu.edu/-bae/courses/bae465/), in the Biological Engineering curriculum of the Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department at North Carolina State University have made extensive use of the World Wide Web (1) to distribute course materials to students, (2) to obtain supplementary information from throughout the world, and (3) to provide a vehicle for multimedia student projects. Hot links were provided from the syllabus to the instructional objectives for the topics covered in each course. The "Engineering Biology" course also had links to homework assignments, to supplementary materials e.g. the Human Genome Project, and to instructional objectives for each lab. An e-mailer was provided to allow BAE235 students to send anonymous feedback to the instructors. Students in "Biomedical Engineering Applications" were given homework assignments which involved using the World Wide Web to find the home pages of other biological and biomedical engineering programs and to find examples of topics they were studying in class. In addition, the BAE465 students worked in groups to produce electronic term projects. Each group made an on-line presentation of its project to the class at the end of the term. These projects will form the basis for an introductory electronic textbook on biomedical engineering which will be available to the global community. BAE465 projects have also been linked to relevant topics in the syllabus for BAE235.