2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In recent years, biomechanics education has been evolving towards providing students with more project-based and experiential learning. Our university has been developing a Biomedical Engineering program which has provided the opportunity to design a Biomechanics course from scratch that will allow for a course that involves multiple modalities for interacting with the course material focusing on hands-on labs and projects. This study describes the development of an innovative, student-centered Biomechanics course. This course will include instruction on basic biomechanics and engineering principles including uniaxial tension, compression, bending, and torsion applied to orthopedic biomechanics, as well as rigid body planar kinematics and dynamics and numerical methods including finite element techniques. These mechanics techniques will be given proper context within a biomedical framework by interweaving the mechanics with information on the physiological reactions of the musculoskeletal systems that experience these forces. Further contextualization of these concepts and scientific literacy will be taught by including analysis of scientific journal articles. Application of these techniques will be taught through labs in mechanical testing and numerical methods. Knowledge of engineering mechanics and biomechanical responses will be evaluated through questions on three midterm exams and one comprehensive final exam. The ability to conduct experimentation and analyze experimental data will be assessed by having students conduct mechanical testing experiments on biological materials and then complete a lab report analyzing the results of these experiments. Lab reports will also be used to assess students' ability to use numerical methods and MATLAB programming to solve complex biomechanics problems. The ability of students to acquire and apply new knowledge will be assessed through journal article analysis culminating in a final project in which each student will choose a biomechanics-related journal article that the student will present to the class. Finally, end-of-semester student evaluations will be used in order to reflect on the effectiveness of these teaching strategies and further iterate the course development process as well as evaluate student confidence in the material that they have learned. This paper will include the course syllabus as well as assignment prompts and rubrics for grading labs, and the template students will use to evaluate journal articles. After the course has been completed, I will publish work that includes the student assessment data and use this to further improve on the goal of a student-centered course.