Enhanced laboratory exercises for biomedical engineering courses

Abstract

Laboratory exercises are a basic premise of quality experience in the practical education of biomedical engineering specialists and physicians. An increasing number of students and reorganized curricula require innovative approaches to laboratory experiments. Four laboratory exercises have been defined and added into the syllabus of the course, “Models in Biomedical Engineering”. They include system identification on example of mechanical ventilation, feedback control in biological systems, signal models on example of blood pressure and flow velocity for assessment of cerebral autoregulation, and process models on example of pacemaker therapy. These complex topics were implemented to an e-learning project in order to enhance and simplify learning. Using the authoring tool IDEA an e-learning tutorial could achieve this goal. Online tutorials composed of structured theory explanation, interactive exercises and tests allowed students to learn according to their pace and time. So the tutor could concentrate on those topics, which were problematic for the students, comprehensive user tracking was successfully utilized.