Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: This paper is a report on an interdisciplinary graduate/senior level medical technology design class offered through the electrical engineering department at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo Spring 2013.Participating students were from electrical engineering, biomedical engineering, computer engineering, psychology and computer science.The course had a major project component where student self-formed groups and did a project of interest to all members of the group.Grading of the project was based on a demonstration and report that were due at the end of the quarter.Due to the uniqueness of each project, weekly meetings were set up where the students reported progress and problems.An ongoing Google-Doc document was also created that they were required to update weekly and was graded.Lectures included topics which all majors could participate in such as privacy and security, ethics, discussions of computer systems where humans are considered an element and a more technical section where each major taught the rest of the class something that was related to the course that they were experts on.Grading was largely based on the project but also included class participation and class presentations.The course was well received by the majority of students and there was gratitude expressed from the students for the opportunity to work with students from other disciplines.Projects from the class spawned a product (already in use by CalTrans), multiple Master's projects, multiple senior projects, and a new collaboration between electrical engineering, materials science, biomedical department and a group on campus doing printed circuits in the Graphic Communication department.The course not only gave the students an opportunity to explore how to work with interdisciplinary teams but also a view into other specialties that they might need to seek out to complete projects in the future.
Author: Tina Smilkstein
Institution: California Polytechnic State University
Language: English
Subfield: Biomedical Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W4409668219